Scope
Ohm's law is an empirical law, a generalization from many experiments that have shown that current is approximately proportional to electric field for most materials. It is less fundamental than Maxwell's equations and is not always obeyed. Any given material will break down under a strong-enough electric field, and some materials of interest in electrical engineering are "non-ohmic" under weak fields.
Ohm's law has been observed on a wide range of length scales. In the early 20th century, it was thought that Ohm's law would fail at the atomic scale, but experiments have not borne out this expectation. As of 2012, researchers have demonstrated that Ohm's law works for silicon wires as small as four atoms wide, and one atom high.
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Famous quotes containing the word scope:
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—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
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“For it is not the bare words but the scope of the writer that gives the true light, by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive no thing from them clearly.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)