How does an electric circuit work where there are multiple switches? One light circuit in my house has four switches; three along a hallway and one downstairs. Using any switch either turns on all the lights or turns them all off regardless of other switches positions.
In: 4
In your normal single-switch lightswitch, you have one input and one output. Your light switch either connects them or it doesn’t.
But then you have things called 3-way and 4-way switches.
A 3-way switch has one side with one electrical wire connected, and another side with two wires connected. There is always a connection through the switch to one of the two connections, and flipping the switch will flip it back and forth between connecting to the two wires on the other side.
A second 3-way switch on the other end takes those two output wires and does the same thing in reverse. Exactly one of the two wires is connected to the output on the other end.
If both switches are set to use the same wire connecting between them, then you have a completed circuit. If one is connected to wire A, but the other is connected to wire B, you don’t have a complete circuit.
Now if you want to add another switch into the mix, you need something called a 4-way switch. This will have two inputs and two outputs. It also has two connections made inside. Basically, there’s a connection from Input A to Output A and Input B to Output B, but if you flip the switch, then Input A switches to Output B and Input B switches to Output A. This means that this one switch, when in the middle of two 3-way switches, can toggle how they’re connected. At this point you can just add as many 4-way switches as you want.
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