Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.
Resource icon

Determine Voltage Drop Across Resistors 2013-03-02

How to calculate voltage drop across series resistors.

Step 1

Determine current of total resistors across the series.

(I = Current/V=Voltage/R(t)=Resistance Total)

I = V / R(t)
I = 9 / (2k + 5k + 10K)
I = .53 mA​

Step 2

Now that we have the Current across the resistors we can calculate the voltage across EACH resistor.

I = Current
Vx = Voltage (x = Current Value across X Resistor)
Rx = Resistor value(x = resistor#)

V = I x Rx

V1 = .53 mA x 2k
V1 = 1.06V

V2 = .53 mA x 5k
V2 = 2.65

V3 = .53 mA x 10k
V3 = 5.3V

V1 + V2 + V3 = 9.01 (voltage is 9V only 9.01 because i rounded up from .529 to .53) At .529 you can see barely a difference:

V1=1.058V
V2=2.645V
V3=5.290V
V Total= 8.993V​

Also If the resistors are all the same value its easier.

To determine the voltage applied by each keypress, you simply add up the voltage drops connected to that key.

So just add them up:

I = V / R(t)
I = 9 / (5k + 5k + 5K)
I = .6 mA

THEN:


V = I x Rx

V1 = .6 mA x 5k
V1 = 3V
so since all Resistors are same value:
V2 = 3V
V3 = 3V

Also To get different values for like switches just use gnd as a start point and the end of each resistor and a end point. This way you get 3 switches from this each having different voltages

SW1 = 3V
SW2 = 6V
SW3 = 9V

So I hope someone can learn something from this.
Author
AtomSoft
Views
16,844
First release
Last update
Rating
5.00 star(s) 1 ratings

Latest reviews

Great work AtomSoft, this is one of our most popular articles!

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top