Electrical entry in NYT Crossword stumps solvers – Adafruit consulted @DebAmlen @nytimeswordplay @Adafruit
Deb Amlen, New York Times crossword columnist and senior staff editor of Wordplay, writes about the entry that stumped many puzzlers October 22nd, but would be known to many Adafruit readers: Ampere! Here Adafruit provides the answer for Deb:
The electrical measurement known as the AMPERE, or “amp,” has appeared in the New York Times Crossword 103 times, yet many solvers missed this entry in the Tuesday, Oct. 22 crossword puzzle. Let’s take a closer look at it and the way it might be clued so solvers are more likely to get it next time.
An AMPERE is the base unit of electric current in the International System of Units, or SI.
“In practical terms,” says the electronics educational website Adafruit.com, “the AMPERE is a measure of the amount of electric charge passing a point in an electric circuit per unit time.” It was named after André-Marie Ampére (1775-1836), who is considered to be the father of electrodynamics.
The AMPERE is an important part of the useful equation known as Ohm’s law, which helps calculate the voltage, amperage or resistance in an electrical circuit. It is expressed as V (for voltage) = I (for AMPEREs) x R (for resistance).
How It Might Be Clued
Clues that involve wordplay are in bold.
“Current measure,” “Current amount,” “An ‘A’ in physics?,” “Current unit,” “A in physics,” “Electrical unit,” “Subject of current thinking?,” “Noted French physicist,” “French physicist after whom an electric unit is named,” “Fuse unit,” “Law man?,” “French physicist André,” “Coulomb per second,” “Bit of current,” “The Newton of Electricity”
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython Pico W Bluetooth, CircuitPython 8.0.4 and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
