What is recorded here?
Kirchhoff states and derives steady-circuit junction and loop relations: current balances at a junction, and signed resistance drops around a closed path equal the electromotive forces on that path. A complicated circuit becomes manageable when every meeting point and every closed route supplies a simple equation. Kirchhoff uses the fact that steady charge cannot accumulate at a junction, together with the potential changes and sources along a loop. These local statements connect Ohm's wire relation to an entire network. His surrounding disk experiments show both where the theory agreed with observations and where the apparatus could not resolve a proposed test.
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Scientific scope
The assessed delta is the two relations on pages 513-514 of the 1845 paper, within its steady galvanic, resistive-wire and localized-source model. Junction balance uses absence of charge accumulation; loop balance uses the source and potential conventions stated in the original. It does not automatically cover arbitrary changing magnetic flux, distributed high-frequency circuits or all later component models. The preceding circular thin-disk theory is context, not a claim of a completely validated disk-resistance formula. Small contacts and approximate end conditions are explicit, and page 512 says the attempted total-resistance experiment was too uncertain to decide for or against theory. The unread 1846 supplement is a separate follow-up; later formulas are not absorbed here. Ohm and earlier balance constructions remain prior work.
Read the original work
- Studiosus Kirchhoff, Ueber den Durchgang eines elektrischen Stromes durch eine Ebene, insbesondere durch eine kreisfoermige (1845), original facsimile
- Wikisource author and work index for Gustav Robert Kirchhoff: the 1845, 1846 and 1847 electrical papers
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People and systems
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
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English catalogue narrative
Kirchhoff: currents balance at junctions and around loops
Kirchhoff states and derives steady-circuit junction and loop relations: current balances at a junction, and signed resistance drops around a closed path equal the electromotive forces on that path.
A complicated circuit becomes manageable when every meeting point and every closed route supplies a simple equation. Kirchhoff uses the fact that steady charge cannot accumulate at a junction, together with the potential changes and sources along a loop. These local statements connect Ohm's wire relation to an entire network. His surrounding disk experiments show both where the theory agreed with observations and where the apparatus could not resolve a proposed test.
Scientific scope
The assessed delta is the two relations on pages 513-514 of the 1845 paper, within its steady galvanic, resistive-wire and localized-source model. Junction balance uses absence of charge accumulation; loop balance uses the source and potential conventions stated in the original. It does not automatically cover arbitrary changing magnetic flux, distributed high-frequency circuits or all later component models. The preceding circular thin-disk theory is context, not a claim of a completely validated disk-resistance formula. Small contacts and approximate end conditions are explicit, and page 512 says the attempted total-resistance experiment was too uncertain to decide for or against theory. The unread 1846 supplement is a separate follow-up; later formulas are not absorbed here. Ohm and earlier balance constructions remain prior work.
People and systems
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff