Spot. What's up, everybody, Welcome to another episode of Let's Ask Paul,
the podcast where you get to ask me Paul Abernathy anything you want about
the National Electrical Code and all things electrically related. All you got to do
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Somebody has asked me to talk about series circuits and parallel circuits and are
there any things to keep in mind when trying to perform these circuits. Well,
many people will say today, there's really no need to try to memorize
or understand series and parallel circuits. It's not something that you have to think
about all the time, except for, you know, on an exam.
It's low hanging fruit. You know, they able to ask you a serious
circuit now if you're in electronics, this stuff happens all the time for you.
But at the end of the day, it's probably not something that you,
as an electrician, run into having to calculate out a series or parallel
circuit that often, if ever, in your career, right, I don't
think in my mind, I've ever had to worry about it, except for
when I was doing things like alarm systems and stuff like that, and I'm
really sensitive on the equipment and all this kind of stuff. But other than
that, you probably don't run into it that often. Now you're going to
be that one guy, that one guy okay, well that listens to the
podcast and says, oh, I disagree, I do it all the time,
okay, whatever I feel you. Reality is, most electricians don't.
So let's be real. You don't speak for the majority, You speak for
your own minority, right. So, so, for the end of the
day, on an exam, though, it is important to make sure that
you understand some of the fundamentals that are involved in serious and parallel circuit applications.
So we're going to kind of go over that, talk about it a
little bit and give some kind of rule of thumbs and things to remember.
Now, by no means do you know, is there an expectation for somebody
to memorize all this stuff? You know, when you're studying for an electrical
exam or you're you know, you're the teacher, you're educator. It's nice
to have this thing as a resource. Keep it friendly and easy. Uh.
The Ugly's book is great. I'm using that for an examples today.
Ugly Books great. Pick up a copy of that just to have it with
you. Works great. But uh, you know, there's by no means
to these things you should have to try to commit to memory. Okay,
okay, So let's talk a little bit for your preparing for an exam where
you get a question and they and we're talking about serious circuits. Now at
the root of it, what is a serious circuit. Well, that's a
serious circuit where is actually the electrons are flowing in one path through the circuit
right now. When we say this in theory, we're not talking about alternating
current moving back and forth. We just talking about the basics of being able
to do the calculation and the concept of series that it flows. Okay,
and the serious circuits is a circuit that has only one path through which the
electrons may flow. And then that is again understanding theory that the electrons aren't
really flowing. It's the movement of those electrons that create the reaction, and
YadA, YadA, YadA. But it's going to help you understand the kind
of in your mind thinking of a flow. Right. So a couple of
rules that you want to remember about serious circuits is that the total current in
a circuit is equal to the current in any other part of the circuit.
Right, So, for example, the total current of adding all the current
up of its ten amps, right, then the current is going to be
the same at any part of the series circuit. So total current or it
is going to be same as the current at Node one or Node two,
or No. Three or No. Four. At the end of the day,
they're all going to be the same. So if it's ten amps,
then it's ten amps throughout the series circuit. That does not change. Okay,
Now that's the first rule to remember. The total current does what The
total current is equal to the current at any other part in that circuit.
So if I'm seeing something in series and it's the ten amps, is the
overall load? And they asked me a question about what's the amps at node
one, and it's a circuit, then you know, if it's ten amps
total, then the total is ten amps at node one. Okay. The
next one would be dealing with voltage. So again a serious circuit, okay.
And when we say series, we're talking about let's starting out at the
source, going out through the load, through the whole system, all the
way back, and then coming back to the source. That's a serious circuit.
Just one big, one big, complete loop. Okay. So when
it comes to voltage in a serious circuit, the voltage is equal to the
sum of the voltage across all parts of the circuit, right, So what
does that mean? So the total voltage is equal to whatever the voltage is
at node one plus the voltage at node two plus the voltage is node three.
So one thing to remember about a series circuit is the voltages are additive.
So if they give you a question and it gives specific voltage at each
node, then the total voltage, if it's one hundred and twenty volt it
should be additive, right. So if they give you two voltage at two
points and the third one doesn't have a voltage, then you add up node
one in node two, and you subtract that from the one to twenty which
is at the source, and that'll tell you what the value is for the
third node. And when it comes to the voltage, makes sense. They're
additive. Next, and the last component with this one is the resistance.
So the resistance when it comes to a series circuit, the total resistance is
equal to the sum of the resistance of all the parts of the circuit,
just like the voltage. So one thing to remember is when a series circuit
current is the same, the voltage and the resistance are additive. It's a
summation. So if you can remember that series circuit current remains the same voltage
and resistance is summation or additive. So when it comes to the resistance,
the total resistance, it is just the resistance at node one plus the resistance
at node two plus the resistance at node three. Add them all up,
then that's your total resistance. Right now, it's important to realize that you
need to know olms law. And I have a separate podcast that I did
just on ohlms Law, so make sure you go check that out. I
think that it is episode Let's Ask Paul. Episode one seventy one, I
believe, But that is just purely an episode on Olms law. Obviously,
to be able to get the values here, the amps, there is the
voltage and resistance, you got to know Olms law. Right, it makes
sense that you need to know all of these factors. So if I had
to give you an exam and I gave you some loads in a serious circuit,
and it flows through all these loads, flows through everything. Okay,
So if we had a resistance and maybe we had a light, we have
resistance, and we have some other load and so at we'll call it three
different nodes, Okay, three nodes on a serious circuit, three points where
there's going to be a load. Okay, Okay, So I'm going to
give you some values and we're trying to find what's the overall voltage, what's
the overall current, and what's the overall resistance? Right, makes sense?
Okay, So here's what it is at each node, and if you want
to take notes, you can take notes, and this is also available in
your ugly Okay. So I'm not reinventing the wheel here because I wanted to
be able to give you a resource to go back to. But many of
You don't have the ugly, so I just want to talk to you.
These are examples. So the first load is it's eight volts. At that
load, there's point four amps of current and the resistance is twenty ohms.
Okay, well, the first one, we can answer this entire question when
it says what is the current? Remember what we said in this whole thing,
the current in a series is equal to any other part of the circuit.
So I can already tell you the current total for this entire circuit is
going to be point four amps, right, makes sense. That's the total
it again, that's the whole equation there is. We told you that the
current is nothing more. It's the same in every node. It's only the
voltage and the resistance that become additive. Makes sense. Okay, So the
first node was eight vaults, point four amps and twenty olms. Okay,
so we already knock one question out of the way. We know what the
total current is. It's point four as. That's it. The next thing
is the second node, which is ten volts, and then we know it's
point four amps, and then we know it's twenty five ohms of resistance.
Okay, that's the second node, and then the third node was six volts,
and then we had again amps is er point four amps, and then
the resistance is fifteen olms. Well, remember this is easy for us.
So the current is exactly the same, and the volts and the resistance are
additive. So it's simply eight at the first node, plus ten volts at
the second node, plus six volts at the third node. That's twenty four
volts. Easy, psy right. And then it comes to the ohms,
it's simply twenty ohms at the first one, twenty five ohms at the second
one, and fifteen olms at the third one, so that is sixty ohms.
These are pretty simple if you keep in your mind right, Just keep
thinking in your mind that again, when I'm dealing with current, all the
nodes are the same. It's going to be the same current in a serious
circuit. But when it comes to the voltage and the resistance it's additive.
Makes sense, okay, So making that a little harder for the serious circuit.
And again, this is about as hard as they're gonna get folks on
an exam. Trusts me, this is gonna be it. So now I've
got four different loads four different resistive loads, and I'm gonna give you the
values, but I'm going to tell you stuff that's missing, and you're gonna
say, what the hell do I solve what's missing? Well, this is
when you got to know owns law. And this is why you need to
listen to the other podcast when it comes to owns Law, because we're gonna
work this one, this one out, but I will bring in those formulas
while we try to solve this. So relax, we'll we'll we'll do it
all together. And this is gonna be tip difficult for you to listen to
and follow up long, so just listen. I will do my best to
elaborate on each node. Okay, I would do my best to do that.
Okay. So the very first load, all we have in our equation
is the resistance seventy two ohms. That's all it gives is. It doesn't
give me the voltage and it doesn't give me the current. Okay, but
watch watch how we're going to do this, because the other loads give you
other varying values, and this is how they do it on exams. Okay,
so that's fine. We know the resistance of R one is seventy two
ohms. Perfect. Now the resistance at the second or the second load gives
us twelve volts, okay, But then it doesn't give us the current,
same as it didn't give us the current on the first one, and then
it doesn't give me the resistance on this one. That's okay, that's okay,
as long as now I've got I've got the vat. So I got
twelve vaults. Okay. So I got twelve vaults so far, and I've
got seventy two ohms in the first resistant resistance ohms, and then the second
one I got nothing. It doesn't tell me. That's fine, that's fine.
So at the third one, now we've got nothing for the voltage.
Okay, that's fine. But we have the current. The current is zero
point five ampiers at this node a third node. Great. Remember what we
said about current. Current does not change, it stays the same. So
we have that variable that we can use. And remember now that we have
the current, and then in all these other ones we have the resistance.
We can solve for the other things that we don't know. Remember, if
you listen to my owns Law podcast, this is where people will see a
question like this and freak out. It's all right here. You just have
to take your time, okay. So now this third node also lists it
at forty eight ohms of resistance for this third node, so we're going to
write that down forty eight ons. So the first resistive node was seventy two,
the third one was forty eight. We didn't give us anything for the
second one, and now we move on to the third of the fourth one,
and the fourth one gives me the voltage, which is forty eight vaults
okay, but it doesn't give me any current and it doesn't give me any
resistance. But that's okay, right because we know that the current stays the
same at every location, so it's zero point five for that. So we
could plug that in on all of these and that shows us that on all
of these loads, we now have at least two variables that we can use
to solve the other portions of the loads. Pretty cool, huh, I
mean, it's how it works. Okay, So well we can plug all
this this stuff in. So let's take a summary of what we've got.
Okay, Okay, So I've got the first load. We'll call it the
node node number one, and it has no voltage, no resistance. Excuse
me. It has no voltage, no current, but has a resistance of
seventy two ohms. Okay, so let's work this one first. So what
we do is we know that the current stays the same. So we've got
at this first one, we've got seventy two ohms and we've got a point
five or zero point five of amps. So we know we're trying to solve
for what we want to solve for the voltage? Correct, sweet, So
what do we do? So if you remember back in my other episode,
what formula are we going to use if we have the resistance and we have
the amps. So when it comes to vaults, we have the amps and
we have the resistance. So it's basically to solve for volts, it's the
amps times the vaults, all right, So let's do it. So I'm
at my calculator here, so I've got the amps zero point five times seventy
two, which is the ohms, and that gives me what that gives me
a value of thirty six volts. So that's so at the very first node,
I've got thirty six volts. I've got zero point five amps, which
again was the same as all of them, and then the resistance was seventy
two ohms. Now we've already done number one. That's it. Now we'll
do the whole circuits total after we do each node. Okay, so let's
move on to the second node. So the second node, we had twelve
volts, but we didn't have the current and we didn't have the resistance.
Well, now it's easy, right because we know what the current is.
It's consistent at all points at point five and that was given to us in
the node three. Right, So what do we do? All right,
So we have volts and we have the amps, which is point five.
So now we're solving for the resistance. So we got twelve vaults and we
got zero point five amps. We go back and look at our Ohm's law
wheel and say, okay, what are we trying to solve for. We're
trying to solve for the resistance and oms. Well, if we know the
voltage and we know the amps, then we look at the formula that's that's
best for us, and so again it's simply volts divided by amps. Okay,
so let's do that. Let's see here, So it's volts zero point
five divided by let's see, No, it's a vault. Excuse me,
volts would be it's twelve vaults divided by the amps, which is zero point
five, and that's going to give me twenty four. So we're looking again,
all right, So we're solving for this one. So let's see here
the resist here, Let's see which one do we do in here? Oh,
we're solving for a resistance. So yeah, so we do our vaults.
We go back twelve divided by the amps, and we said it was
zero point five and it's twenty four. Perfect. So at this point we
know that this one is twelve volts, we know that it is point zero
five amps, and we know that the resistance for this one is going to
be twenty four owns boom. That's number two. And at the end,
you remember how we add things up. Okay, you get it, So
that's number two. All right. So the third one, we weren't given
the voltage, but we were given the amps and we were given the resistance.
This is easy. So we're solving for e. We're trying to find
out what the vaults are. But since we have the amps and we have
the resistance, then it's pretty easy, right, we do the amps times
the resistance, so let's just do that on a calculator. So our amps
is zero point five times of resistance and it gave it to us at forty
eight oms and that is twenty four. So our volts for that node is
twenty four volts. So Node three is twenty four volts, the amps is
point five amps, and the resistance which was given to us as forty eight
homes of resistance, and that's number three. And then the last node,
number four. Remember it was forty eight volts for the voltage, but it
didn't give us the amps or the resistance. But we know what the amps
are because that is constant through all of the nodes. That is zero point
five. So we can work this one out. So in this one,
we know that we have the forty eight volts and we know what the amps
are, so let's do No. Number four. So it's forty eight volts,
the amps are zero point five amps, and we're only solving for the
resistance. Well, if we're for the resistance and we have the voltage and
we have the amps, then it's pretty straightforward, right the voltage divided by
the amps. So let's do that. So the voltage is uh, let's
see here, it's forty eight volts divided by the amps zero point five,
and that gives me a total of ninety six ohms. See how that works.
So it's forty eight volts, it is zero point five amps, and
then it's ninety six ohms and that's Node number four. Okay, so now
we have all of our nodes. Node number one it was thirty six volts,
it was point five amps, it was seventy two ohms. Our node
number two was twelve volts zero point five amps, and it was twenty four
ohms. And then Node three, which they didn't give us the voltage,
but we calculated it twenty four volts. Remember the amps stayed the same zero
point five, and then it gave us the omes, which was forty eight
homes. And then Node number four, which gave us the voltage, but
it did not give us the amps or the resistance. But we know that
the amps is easy because it's point five for all of them. So the
amps is point five, and then the resistance we calculated out and that gave
us ninety six oms. So what do you do at the end of the
day? All right? Well, easy, the total current is what zero
point five? Remember that stayed the same. When it comes to the voltage,
it's just summation. So you add them all up. So No.
Number one was thirty six volts, so thirty six plus Node number two was
twelve volts plus Node number three was twenty four volts plus Node number four was
forty eight volts. That he goes one hundred and twenty volts. So this
is one hundred and twenty volt circuit. Okay, And so we solved that
the current again zero point five for all of them. And then lastly was
the resistance and what did you do? What did we say you do for
resistance? It's the summation when it comes to series. So I'm just gonna
add them up. So Node one seventy two ohms of resistance, Noe two
was twenty four oms of resistance. No three was forty eight oms of resistance,
and Node four was ninety six oms of resistance. So the overall resistance
in the entire circuit was two hundred and forty ohms of resistance. That was
the total makes sense. So easiest thing to remember again when it comes to
series, is the current is the same no matter what node of resistance you're
at. The current doesn't change. This is a series circuit. However,
the voltage and the resistance total is based on a summation, and you have
to use the Ohms law to order to solve each load. And then it's
at the it's a matter of just adding those up. So that's why it's
so important that you before you jump into something like a serious circuit. It
may seem simple, it's just a simple serious circuit, but a lot of
this is based on what they give you. And so as long as they
give you some values that you can start doing the equations, you got to
know how to do Ohm's law to be able to get those values in order
to solve your serious circuit. And so if you haven't listened to our podcast
on this entitled Ohms Law Basics, I believe it was episode one seventy one.
Uh and then let's ask Paul series. Make sure you go listen to
that before you do this one. But again, if you've already watched listen
to this one and I'm just telling you that, then it's a little too
late, isn't it. So now jump back and go listen to the Ohms
Law one you'll get a better understanding. But that's the basics of serious circuits.
Okay, all right, that's all we're gonna do for this episode,
just talking series. Yes, I am the only guy in the world that
can drag a serious circuit explanation out to thirty minutes, but it is what
it is. If you don't like it, don't listen until next time,
folks, Stay safe, God bless, and stay tuned for another episode where
I will talk about the basics of a parallel circuit and understanding how you calculate
those out. But before you move on to that one, make sure you
go listen to the Ohms Law episode again, Episode one seventy one. I
believe. Don't hold that to me, all right, till next time,
Stay safe, God bless.