3.2 A battery of emf 10 V and internal resistance 3 Ω is connected to a resistor. If the current in the circuit is 0.5 A, what is the resistance of the resistor? What is the terminal voltage of the battery when the circuit is closed?

3.6 LIMITATIONS OF OHM’S LAW Although Ohm’s law has been found valid over a large class of materials, there do exist materials and devices used in electric circuits where the proportionality of V and I does not hold. The deviations broadly are one or more of the following FIGURE 3.5 The dashed line types: represents the linear Ohm’s (a) V ceases to be proportional to I (Fig. 3.5). law. The solid line is the voltage (b) The relation between V and I depends on the sign of V. In V versus current I for a good other words, if I is the current for a certain V, then reversing conductor. the direction of V keeping its magnitude fixed, does not produce a current of the same magnitude as I in the opposite direction (Fig. 3.6). This happens, for example, in a diode which we will study in Chapter 14. FIGURE 3.6 Characteristic curve FIGURE 3.7 Variation of current of a diode. Note the different versus voltage for GaAs. scales for negative and positive values of the voltage and current. (c) The relation between V and I is not unique, i.e., there is more than one value of V for the same current I (Fig. 3.7). A material exhibiting such behaviour is GaAs. Materials and devices not obeying Ohm’s law in the form of Eq. (3.3) are actually widely used in electronic circuits. In this and a few subsequent chapters, however, we will study the electrical currents in materials that obey Ohm’s law.

3.1 The storage battery of a car has an emf of 12 V. If the internal resistance of the battery is 0.4 Ω, what is the maximum current that can be drawn from the battery?