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On the boards
ends. We say resistors joined together at both ends are in
parallel. Figure 2.7 shows the circuit diagram of two resistors
joined in parallel, and Figure 2.8 shows a breadboard layout.
Both these resistors are, again, 10 k resistors. What do you
think the overall resistance will be? It’s certainly not 20 k!
Measure it yourself using your multi-meter and breadboard.
You should find that the overall resistance is 5 k. Odd, eh?
Replace the two 10 k resistors with resistors of different value
say, two 150 Ω resistors (brown, green, brown). The overall
resistance is 75 Ω.
Figure 2.7
symbol
The circuit diagram for two resistors in parallel, with the meter
So, we can see that if two equal value resistors are in parallel,
the overall resistance is half the value of one of them. This is
a quite useful fact to remember when two parallel resistors
are equal in value, but what happens when they’re not?
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