Ohm’s main interest was current electricity, which had recently been advanced by Alessandro Volta’s invention of the battery. Ohm made only a modest living and as a result his experimental equipment was primitive. Despite this, he made his own metal wire, producing a range of thickness and lengths of remarkable consistent quality. The nine years he spent at the Jesuit’s college, he did considerable experimental research on the nature of electric circuits. He took considerable pains to be brutally accurate with every detail of his work. In 1827, he was able to show from his experiments that there was a simple relationship between resistance, current and voltage.
Ohm’s sangat tertarik menyelidiki arus listrik setelah Alessandro Volta menemukan battery. Dalam penyelidikan itu Ohm mempergunakan alat-alat sederhana dan kuno namun dalam teknik pembuatanya ia memperhatikan kualitas secara presisi seperti kawat metal buatannya. Setelah menghabiskan pendidikannya di perguruan tinggi Jesuit’s, Ohm lebih amat sangat teliti dalam semua pekerjaannya. Pada tahun 1827 barulah ia berani mempertunjukan hubungan sederhana antara resistance, arus dan tegangan.
Ohm’s law stated that the amount of steady current through a material is directly proportional to the voltage across the material, for some fixed temperature:
Ohms menyatakan bahwa arus yang mengalir melalui suatu bahan adalah sepadan dengan tegangan yang melintasi bahan itu. Dinyatakan dalam rumus yang terkenal :
I = V/R
Ohm had discovered the distribution of electromotive force in an electrical circuit, and had established a definite relationship connecting resistance, electromotive force and current strength.
Kemudian Ohms menemukan distribusi dari gaya elektromotif dalam rangkaian listrik yang menentukan hubungan pasti terhadap rangkaian resistance, gaya electromotive dan kuat arusnya.
Ohm was afraid that the purely experimental basis of his work would undermine the importance of his discovery. He tried to state his law theoretically but his rambling mathematically proofs made him an object of ridicule. In the years that followed, Ohm lived in poverty, tutoring privately in Berlin. He would receive no credit for his findings until he was made director of the Polytechnic School of Nüremberg in 1833. In 1841, the Royal Society in London recognized the significance of his discovery and awarded him the Copley medal. The following year, they admitted him as a member. In 1849, just 5 years before his death, Ohm’s lifelong dream was realized when he was given a professorship of Experimental Physics at the University of Munich. On July 7th,1854 he passed away in Munich, at the age of 65.
Hampir-hampir ia ragu bahwa hasi teori dasarnya gugur dan menjadi bahan olok-olokan karena selama itu kemiskinan selalu menderanya hingga ia tetap mengajar secara privat di Berlin. Karena itulah hasil penemuannya tidak pernah mendapat simpati dan pengakuan sampai pada akhirnya menjadi pucuk pimpinan di sekolah polyteknik Nuremberg pada tahun 1833. Di tahun 1849, lima tahun sebelum wafat, mimpi panjangnya menjadi kenyataan saat menjadi guru besar di Experimental Physics, the University of Munich. Ohm wafat di usia 65 tahun, tepatnya 7-Juli-1854.
This belated recognition was welcome but there remains the question of why someone who today is a household name for his important contribution struggled for so long to gain acknowledgement. This may have no simple explanation but rather be the result of a number of different contributory factors. One factor may have been the inwardness of Ohm’s character while another was certainly his mathematical approach to topics which at that time were studied in his country a non-mathematical way. There was undoubtedly also personal disputes with the men in power which did Ohm no good at all. He certainly did not find favor with Johannes Schultz who was an influential figure in the ministry of education in Berlin, and with Georg Friedrich Pohl, a professor of physics in that city.
Pengakuan teori ohm terlambat namun kematiannya membekaskan pertanyaan : mengapa perjuangan panjang beliau sangat berat dan panjang untuk mendapat pengakuan setelah kematiannya, padahal penemuan (yang dianggap) sepele itu ikut ambil bagian terbesar dalam peralatan rumah tangga kita?. Ini membutuhkan penjelasan panjang dan banyak penyebab. Salah satu faktornya mungkin pembahasan teorinya dengan pendekatan matematis yang rumit sedangkan latar belakang sekolahnya dianggap tidak mendukung apa yang digagaskannya. Pada saat itu banyak orang meragukan bahwa teorinya hanya bualan semata!. Pada saat itu sayangnya ia tidak mengenal kebaikan hati orang yang berpengaruh seperti Johannes Schultz sebagai menteri pendidikan di Berlin dan Friedrich Pohl, seorang professor fisika di kotanya.
Electricity was not the only topic on which Ohm undertook research, and not the only topic in which he ended up in controversy. In 1843 he stated the fundamental principle of physiological acoustics, concerned with the way in which one hears combination tones. However the assumptions which he made in his mathematical derivation were not totally justified and this resulted in a bitter dispute with the physicist August Seebeck. He succeeded in discrediting Ohm’s hypothesis and Ohm had to acknowledge his error.
Padahal bidang kelistrikan bukanlah topic utama Ohm dalam semua risetnya dan bukanlah perjalanan kontroversi satu-satunya dalam penemuannya. Di tahun 1843 bahkan ia menyatakan prinsip dasar psikologi akustik yang menyelidiki respon pendengaran manusia terhadap kombinasi nada. Lagi-lagi dengan asumsi bahwa Ohm bukan Ilmuwan dan pakar matematika handal, ia menuai hinaan yang menyakitkan dari fisikawan August Seebeck, dalam perdebatan, Seebeck telah berhasil meruntuhkan hipotesa Ohm salah besar!. He..he…he…dia keliru besar.
