On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Man on Bridges <manonbrid...@aim.com>wrote:
> ** > > At least in electrical engineering and electronics "we" use the term > "voltage"; I've sofar never met any electrical engineer who in discussions > or talks refered to it being "electric tension" > It is an older term (from 1802) that comes from the description of potential differences as stresses in a medium. It survives mainly in the field of electrical power transmission. You can still see signs at transformer sites warning about high tension. The Cavendish museum has a cockroft-walton machine in the "high tension laboratory". Its use is disappearing slowly, but there's no harm in using older terms now and then for a little color, as long as there is no danger of ambiguity.