4/21 Current in a Closed Circuit

Professor Mason asked us what would happen when the switch in the middle of the circuit was closed. The picture on top is the circuit. The picture below are our predictions on how the light bulbs would react when the switch was closed. We predicted that the top bulb would become brighter and the bottom bulb would become dimmer. Since the potential difference between the bulbs was 0, the bulbs stayed the same. 

This setup is how we were able to produce the brightest bulb using the provided material. We also did a setup of when our bulb was dimmest (not in picture). Using the multimeter, we determined that the brightness of the bulbs depends on the current, voltage, and power.

Using the data we collected from the previous lab, we filled out the tables and questions in the lab manual.

We were asked to find the equivalent resistance of the 4 circuits. We found that in series, the equivalent resistance is the sum and in parallel, the inverse of the equivalent resistance is equal to the sum of the inverse of each resistor.

Similar to the previous exercise, we look at an entire circuit to find the equivalent resistance of each circuit. Going from left to right shows our diagrams simplifying and equivalent resistance is on the bottom left.  

We found the resistance of 4 different resistors on the left. The left side of the table is the resistance of the resistors by decoding the colors indicated on the resistors. On the left, we calculated the resistance using the multimeter. We found that for all 4 resistors, the resistance found using the colors was within uncertainty of their actual resistance. Even though the resistors did not match exactly, it was within uncertainty.