So I’m a beginner in electronics. I’m trying to teach myself because I never had a teacher to explain anything. One of my things is that it’s hard for me to understand something without fully understanding the fundamental basics, which has kept me from progressing in my self-study.
I can’t understand why electrical current shares its power across its loads in a circuit (series, obvs).
For example, a 12 volt battery is connected to a lamp. That lamp gets 12 volts of electricity running through its filaments (or LEDs or whatever). If there were 2 identical lamps in series, then that 12 volts would be split up between each lamp, which would result in them each getting only 6 volts.
But why? The electrons don’t know what the whole circuit looks like, they don’t know or care about how many loads there are. When the actual electron flow hits upon the first load in the circuit, why shouldn’t they act the same as if there is one load? Why would they behave as if there were more loads? At that time, when the electrons are meeting that first load, what makes them go, “only going to be half as bright, buddy”?
My dad tried to help by showing the equation of amps and volts and current, but that doesn’t answer my question at all. It only says it does do that, but it doesn’t tell me WHY.
In: Technology
First, your dad is right that understanding ohm’s law equations lead to understanding electricity. I will try explain with minimum equations. Voltage does not ‘flow’ around a circuit at all. Current is what flows around the circuit. Current in any part of the loop has to be identical to current everywhere in the loop. That part should be intuitive since you can’t have outflow different than inflow. Voltage is just a side-effect of current flow times the electrical resistance of the material. Wires have virtually zero resistance so there’s almost no voltage developed. Identical lights will have identical resistance and therefore identical voltage across. In sort of circular logic, voltage is the thing that causes current to flow in the first place though. The power source, say a battery, generates energy with potential (voltage) to push current flow. The rate of current flow relates to the total loop resistance, inversely. Then we are back at the beginning with current flowing and dropping voltages in the individual resistive circuit elements.
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