Electronics for Absolute Beginners, Chapter 3

Step 12: Designing a Series Circuit

As electronics technicians, we may be asked to construct a circuit to a certain specification. For this lecture we will learn how to design a series circuit with certain specifications. We will use Ohm's Law to aid us in doing so.

Exercise 1: Design a series circuit with three resistors, where two of the resistors are 4kΩ. The total circuit current is 1mA, and the applied voltage is 12V.

First we must list the known values;

VT = 12V ...............R1= 4kΩ.................VR1=.......................IR1 = ....................PR1=
IT = 1mA..................R2= 4kΩ.................VR2=.......................IR2 = ....................PR2=
RT =........................ R3= .........................VR3=...................... IR3=...................... PR3=
PT =

So far we only have the values of VT, IT, R1, and R2. By using our knowledge of Ohm's Law and the Power Formulwe can find the unknown values.