When an electric current is passed through a circuit of a thermocouple, heat is generated at one junction and absorbed at the other junction. This is known as the Peltier effect : the presence of heating or cooling at an electrified junction of two different conductors. The effect is named after French physicist Jean Charles Athanase Peltier, who discovered it in 1834. When a current is made to flow through a junction between two conductors, A and B, heat may be generated or removed at the junction. The Peltier heat generated at the junction per unit time is