electronics for beginners

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Resistors

Resistors limit or reduce the current passed across them. They do this by by having different densities of different materials within them, the most common of which is carbon.

resistor


Make your own

With a soft lead pencil, draw a heavy line on a bit of paper. The lead that is on the paper conducts electricity, but not much of it with a high resistance. By using your multimeter you can touch one probe at one end of the pencil line and the other at various points along the line. The multimeter will tell you what the resistance is at each point.
lead pencil resistor

Combining Resistors

When added in series you can simply add the resistor values together like so...

resistors in series

When added in parallel, it is a little harder, you must divide their product by their sum like so...

resistors in parallel

Voltage division, you can also work out the voltage between two resistor by...

resistors in voltage division



Resistors

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Anonymous
172
http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/components/resist.htm#real
saran.invincible
1
Generally vin is greater than vout,
but by thge above voltage division rule, it is quite the opposite how come?
Anonymous
172
resistor is used in ciruit to limit the current
Anonymous
172
Resistors Have no polarity; they can be installed either way, but often it is best to put them in all facing the same way so as to make reading them easier.
Anonymous
172
Do they need to be put in a circuit in a certain way (positive, negative)? if so, how do I tell what end from the other?
Anonymous
172
The answer to this is mainly to do with the tolorance on the resistors. If you have 10-20-30-40....1000, there is not much difference between 990 and 1000 and 990 is well within the tolorance of 1000. So they start with a even number and jump up by the tollorance. For example with 10% tollorance it starts at 10 and the goes 12 (2 = 10% of 10 times by 2), 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68, 82 so all the ranges are covered evenly. So 10 cover 9,10,11 and 12 covers 11,12,13 and 15 covers 14,15,16 and so on.
Anonymous
172
Hey, Why do resistors have odd values like 47k and 56k, but not 50k? Wouldn't it be alot easier to keep them at rounded values?
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