In this electrician tutorial, you’ll learn how to solve series circuits for electricians.
Remember, most of the time, electricians wire in parallel. This is important to keep voltage the same across our electrical devices. Typical electricians rarely wire in series.. examples would be wiring a certain motor for more torque.
Current stays the same in series circuits!
Electrical Apprentice Schooling
How Series Circuits Work (Series Circuit Principles):
When solving electrical circuits, we need to know a couple different electricity principles like Ohm’s Law, and Kirchhoff’s Current and Voltage Laws (also known as Kirchhoff’s rules).
In short, for a series circuit, that is:
- Current remains the same throughout the circuit
- All voltage drops add up to total circuit voltage
If you remember those two series circuit principles, you can easily solve series circuits. 🙂
As I always say, as electricians, schooling spends A LOT of time teaching circuitry, but it’s really electronics for “electrical engineers”, who are VERY DIFFERENT than electricians.
Series Circuit Example – for Electricians:
Here’s an example of a series circuit equation.
Remember, ALWAYS make your T’s at each load, which I share in Ohm’s Law video. This means literally putting a T above “R1”, and beside “R2” in this image:
In this image, you can see that we’re following the series circuit rules above:
- Current (A) is the same across all electrical loads
- The electrical load voltage drops equal the total circuit voltage
And that’s how you solve a series circuit!
With the T at each voltage drop, you can easily find Voltage, Current, and Resistance!
Now you can learn how to solve parallel circuits for electricians.
