EXPERIMENT ONE

IDENTIFYING, TESTING AND COMBINING RESISTORS

WHAT IS A RESISTOR?

A resistor is a two terminal, passive electronic component that implements electronic resistance as a circuit element. It limits or regulates the flow of current in a circuit.

In the experiment I took different types of resistors and measured there resistances by two methods.

One was color coding and another one being using an ohm meter.

I took 5 different resistors of different resistance values and then first using a coloring code chart I found out the value of all the resistors.

                         

Then I took a multimeter and set it to ohms and measured the value of each resistor.

                

Then I took two resistors of different values of resistance and measured the value of each.

The value of each resistor was 266 ohms and 98 ohms respectively.

Then I connected the two resistors in series and measured the combined value. It was 364 ohms.

          

According to ohm’s law the value of resistors get added when connected in series and thus the value of the combination should be 266 + 98 ohms which is equal to 364 ohms. Thus this verifies the ohm’s law as both the measured and calculated values are equal.

Then I connected both the resistances in parallel and then measured the combined value.

                

The measured value came to be 72 ohms and the calculated value from the formula 1/R = 1/R₁ + 1/R₂

It came to be 71.61 ohms which and thus this also verifies ohm’s law.

REFLECTIONS

Resistors are used because in circuits some devices are very vulnerable if exposed to a bit high voltage. The devices can get damaged. Resistors control the flow of current and just supply that much voltage that the devices do not get damaged.

We use the resistors in series and parallel to vary the amount of resistance using the same resistors. If we want to increase the value of resistance then we will connect the resistors in series and if we want lesser value of resistance then we would connect the resistors in parallel.

This experiment also showed that we can use any of the two methods to measure the resistance and we will get the same value.