The Story of Ohm

Yesterday was my birthday. And ritualistically I was doing some reflection on the year gone by and 2020 — THE year that went by ..and also the decade 2010–2020 gone by.

It has been a tumultuous journey and yet fulfilling in many ways. Towards the end it got too much… and I decided to paint. I would only go so far in my thinking. I needed a Canvas to see what else…was going on….inside me.

I did not have a canvas that I could use to paint on, at last minute..I looked around saw an elephant in the room, an older painting..literally..and pun intended….and decided to paint on it.( I might need to think about this later…)

I felt like doing a FLOW painting and see what it had to show.. not decide what I wanted … in a flow painting..the paint moves ..directed by movement of the canvas and pulled by it’s own nature …and along its journey..”creates” it’s own pattern….what comes out ..cannot be predicted ..all that is there in my hands..is the holding of the canvas and its movement…..and of course my self, and some “Om” chants that were playing in the background ..(could be other music also)

I poured the paint..imagining my internal conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings pouring ..and then the movement started…as it kept moving up and down and circles…I found myself..looking for resistance so that the paint creates patterns ( if there is NO resistance it’s a pretty flat painting) ..all one sees is the paint…when there is resistance… the paint..breaks out into patterns.. in its effort to move …past, it brings out something inside of itself… as it navigates the coarse, sometimes uneven board…..and sometimes other colours.. and inconsistencies…and in this way no two paintings are ever the same..and no two blobs of the same paint are the same either… ..

ok…. Resistance ?? really…I was actually looking for it ??? …This made me ..literally stop in my tracks…and just like that ….I drifted to my engineering days …I used to be fascinated by the little “resistors”..with multicolour bands (I think that was the only colour in the otherwise grey…labs)…I remember playing with them as ‘bridges”. humm…they fascinated me even back then …but..why??? ..of-course one factor was the symbol Ohm (Ω). I loved saying it…It reminded me of a horseshoe always..and I loved writing it.

Pause ….

In doing what I was doing..what was I really doing?

And so my mind now wandered… and thought of the equation V=IR …the equation the BEAUTIFUL equation…

Voltage = Current X Resistance.

And Ohm’s Law

The relationship between current, voltage, and resistance, discovered by Georg Simon Ohm and published in his 1827 paper, The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically. And represented by the Greek letter (Ω). Omega.

Beautiful…..why?

First about Omega (O mega) — (O Great)

In modern Greek, the Omega letter is transcribed simply as o or ō. It also represents the value of 800 in the Greek numeric system, which literally means a great value or the “great O.” (O mega) . It also symbolizes something great or the end of an increment of great development, where this increment could be the universe, the planet, a country or even an individual. The Omega symbol, within this context, represents eternity and means God as an eternal beings. It is used in many different fields from religion to astrology, physics, chemistry, linguistics, computer science, mathematics and molecular biology.

And Now..

The relationship with Potential ..Flow…and … Resistance. (in case it misses out….there IS a relationship )

some basics ….

Current ( ‘I’) : The continuous movement of charge through a circuit is called Current, and it is often referred to in terms of “flow,”. (…haha the current is called the flow )

Voltage (“V” ) : The force motivating charge carriers to “flow” in a circuit is called voltage. Voltage is a specific measure of Potential energy that is always relative between two points.

Resistance (“R”): The measure of the opposition to the current flow in a circuit is called Resistance.

Voltage = Current multiplied by Resistance

Potential = Flow multiplied by Resistance = V = I x R

And So… … what does mean……. Simply..put

a. If either the I (flow) or R(resistance) became zero..The Potential become ZERO. …we need the resistance to NOT be zero

b. If the Potential remains same and resistance increases..the Flow reduces…we need to keep reassessing and releasing our potential

c. Resistance and Potential are directly proportional AND Flow and Potential are directly proportional.

d. Potential AND resistance are always relative between two points.

Potential to performance needs flow AND resistance. Managed in an Environment that is Conductive.

As a Leadership and org consultant. I often hear the words Potential of an individual, team or system and in the same breath the “resistance” referred to as a negative parameter. And efforts made to make it less.

The strategy of increasing the flow by reducing the resistance …essentially keeps the Potential LIMITED…..just saying (No wonder we are afraid to take risks and get outside the comfort zone )

We need to rethink Resistance..and see it for the value it brings in increasing potential and design for harnessing it. It may not be a mere coincidence it is denoted by Omega..The Great O.

If we pause to think of our own life…this DOES make sense..if it weren’t for all those resistances, my potential would not have been tapped deeper to create the flow. What’s is important is to keep recalibrating the Potential…and the resistance and …keep Current flowing.

Humm….. wonder if listening to Om had anything to do with all this…flow.