this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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Amperage is like a rope, you can draw it but you can't push it
You absolutely can push amperage. You just have to increase volts
This has always messed with me to explain, but mostly since this confusion is based on different experiences. If you learn the theory and understand how to craft your own circuitry, pushing and pulling amps can be designed for, but if all you've ever done is install things like a contractor would, then all you're familiar with is pulling amps.
It always makes it such a hard explanation when someone says, "I thought you pulled amps." There really ain't an easy explanation, since most people are only familiar with systems designed to not be used outside their target voltage, so they don't experience Ohm's Law in action.
In retrospect, its probably because I only have these talks with contractors lel, and they've spent a whole lotta time going with the "Pulls amps" approach, and it works out well enough for them. Whatever works for the groups you're communicating among, I suppose.
True, but as someone doing physics, I'll say both is fine. You can push amps by increasing voltage, and also pull amps by varying resistance. After all, ohms law basically is the balancing of theese three.
And if i'm gonna go too far pushing amps is the most sensible thing. The thing we call pulling amps is just decreasing the resistance against the push(voltage) so that pushing becomes more effective. And also what I just called push is also a pull, at negative terminal.
I'm lost. How do you "push amps"? Technically it's just Ohm's law, and "pulling" or "pushing" are only colloquial terms, but in regular usage, a device "pulls" or "draws" a specific current.
The definition of voltage kinda supports this, because voltage isn't something that exists at a single point, like pressure - you can measure pressure in a single point of a fluid, for example, but not so with voltage: it's the difference in potential between two different points.
I'm trying to think of something like a taser gun, where you're kinda trying to "push amps" through some body, but even then there's two barbs that need to hit, if one of them fails you don't get the jolt (as far as I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong), so if anything you're "pulling" the current across with voltage.
If you think of water pressure from a tank to a tap as a "push" then potential difference is also making such a push. Well yeah ambiguity from colloquial terms exist here, but it is not between push and pull. The two points making potential difference, "pushes" amps through the wire connected in between them. You can say that is not a push but like a chain being rotated. The volts is doing the rotating aka pushing+pulling of the chains. But saying a device pulling amps is essentially that devuce becoming less resistive to the push done by volts
If a device consuming power is pulling amps, then consider a device generating power is pushing amps.
You can push electrons into a capacitor if you don't connect the other side. A few of them, but more than zero.
There are electrostatic generators that work by pushing electrons on one side and pulling from the other of some insulator that moves between those two. But you can't sustain a steady state of only one of those actions.
I think that's actually a good example for how I see it. If you could push amps, you'd fill the capacitor without having to pull from the other side, but that doesn't happen, only a tiny amount of current gets in depending on how strong the other side is pulling, which is very little.
In any case this is just mostly about colloquialisms and convention, because neither is an accurate description of the physics behinds it.
You get it. Pushing AMPs is just a voltage significantly higher than the voltage required to jump a gap, or short a circuit, ect. Depending on your application. I like to think of it as a water slide, the source is the high end, the circuit is the slid, and the sink is the bottom of the slide and pushing AMPs is attaching a comic book villan's version of a pump big enough to drain all the water from the ocean.
Nahh the "significantly higher voltage" comes only because your device having some form of protection preventing too much current flow. The most simple device would be a resistor and any change in voltage leads to a change in current. So yes you are pusing amps by changing voltage. Pulling amps is by changing resistance so that volt can push amps easier
I always think of amperage as a cat trying to use its jawline to prise open a cracked door. The door is ohms and the volts is the cat's energy levels at that point. Wide open door you just hear the cat's claws frantically scraping a thud when it slides into the wall
nvm