Current–voltage characteristic

Imagine you have a toy car that needs a battery to move. The battery has two ends, a positive end and a negative end. When you connect the car's motor to the battery, the positive end sends energy to the car and the negative end pulls energy away.

Now, let's say you have a bunch of different batteries with different strengths. If you connect each battery to the car and measure how strong the energy flow is, you'd get a bunch of different numbers showing how hard the car's motor is working.

That's kind of like what a current-voltage characteristic is. It's a way to measure how much energy can flow through a certain material, like a battery or a wire or a light bulb. Different materials might have different strengths, just like the batteries did. And just like the car's motor, the amount of energy flowing changes depending on what the voltage is, which is basically how strong the battery is.

Scientists and engineers use current-voltage characteristics to figure out how different materials behave when electricity flows through them. This helps them design and improve things like electronic devices, power grids, and even alternative energy sources like solar panels.