Teach-In 2011 ABROAD-BASED TOVEVECTRONICS Part 2: Resistors, capacitors, timing and delay circuits By Mike and Richard Tooley (Our Teach-In series is designed to provide you with a broad-base allenpled lo provide euveraye of Hire of Une nit iaportaul electrunies wits thal are earsenlly studied ia many schools and colleges in the UK. These include Edexcel BTEC Level 2 awards, as well as electronics units of the new Diploma in Engineering (also at Level 2). The series will also provide the more experienced reader with an opportunity to ‘brush up' on specific topics with which he or she may be less familiar. Each part of our Teach-In series is organised under five main headings: Learn, Check, Build, Investigate and Amaze. Learn will teach you the theory, Check will help you to check your understanding, and Build will give you an opportunity to build and test simple electronic circuits. Investigate will provide you with a challenge which will allow you to further extend your learning, and finally Amaze will show you the ‘wow factor"! In Jast month's instalment, Learn provided you with an introduction to the signals that convey information in electronic circuits and the units, multiples and sub.multiples that are used when measuring electrical quantities. Build featured an introduction to Circuit Wizard, showing you how to install the soft- ‘ware and use a virtual test instrument while our practical sections, Investigate and Amaze, provided you with an opportunity to get to grips with an oscilloscope based on a PC soundcard. introduce you to resistors, capaci tors, timing and delay circuits. We will also use Circuit Wizard to inves- tigate Ohm's Law as well as finding ‘out what happens in a circuit when a ‘capacitor is changed and dischanged EE pest of Toach-In 2011 wo will es [ogy Resistors From last month’s Teach-In, you should rocall that voltage is speci: fied in volts (V), current in amps (A) and resistance in ohms (9), A potential difference of 1V will 50 appear across a resistance of 19 when a current of 1A flows in it. Resistance can be thought of as ‘an opposition to the flow of electric current. The amount of current that will fow in a circuit when « given cloctromotive force (EMF) is applied lu it is inverely proportional to its resistance. In other words, the largor tho resistance, the greater the opposi- tion to current flow when an EMF is applied. Ohm's law Ohm's law tolls us that the rela- tionship between voltage, V, current, J, and resistance, R, in a cireult (see Fig.2) is: V=IeR whore Vis the voltage (in V), Fis the current (in A) and fis the resist- ance (in Q). Example 1 A current of 200mA flows in a500 revistor. What potential difference appears across the resistor? From Ohm's Law V= Ix R=0.2 «50 =10V (Note that 200mA is the same as 0.24) Everyday Practical Electronics, December 2010Fig.2.2. Various types of resistor, including fixed, preset and variable types Example 2 ‘What current will flow when a 220 rosistoris connected to.a12V battery? Roarranging tho formula to mako I the subject gives: LE osssa=sisma R 2 Example 3 ‘A current of 15mA flows in a ro- sistor when it is connacted to a 24V power supply. What is the value of the resistance? Rearranging the formula to make R the subject gives: v4 “T0015 (Note that 15mA is the same as 0.0154) = 16000 1.6k0Q ‘Types of resistor Various types of fixed, presot and variable resistor ere found in elec: tronic cirouits, including carbon film, suetal Glan, aud wirewound types, see Fig.2.2. Resistors havea wide variety of applications in electronic circuits, where they aro used for determining the voltages and currents in circuits, 1s ‘loads’ to consume power, and in preset and variable form for making adjustments (for example, volume and tone controls) Tho terms potentiometer and variable resistor are often used interchangeably. However, strictly speaking, proset and variable rosis tors have only two torminals while potentiometers (either preset or rotary types) have three terminals. Note also that a preset or variable potentiometer can be used as a vari able resistor by simply ignoring one Current, Resistance, R t " Potential difference, V - of ite oad terminals, or by connecting its moving contact to one of its outer tormina’s. Typical circuit symbols for various types of resistor are shown in Fig The specifications for ‘e rosister usually include tho value of rasistance (expressed in O, kQ or (MO), the accuracy or toler ance of the marked value Fig.2.1. A simple circuit in which a battery supplios current to a resistor (quoted as the maximum permissible percentage deviation from the marked Everyday Practical Electronics, December 2010 Fixed Pre-set resistor resistor — teat Pre-set potentiometer ty Variable Temperature sensitive resistor _tesistor (thermistor) Variable Light dependent Potentiometer resistor (LOR) Fig.2.3. Circuit symbols used for resistors stvalue), and the power rating (which must be equal to, or greater than, tho maximum expected power dis” sipation). Fixed resistors Fixed resistors are available in several series of ‘preferred’ values, see Table 2.1. The number of values Table 2. tho E6, E12 and £24 series of preferred resistor values Series of preferred values Values available Ee 1.0, 1.5,2.2,33,47,68 provided with each series (ie 6, 12 ‘and 24) is determined by the toler ance involved. In ordor to cover the full range of resistance values using resistors hav- ing a 20% tolerance, it is nocessary to provide six basic values (known es ‘the E6 series). More values arerequired. in a series that offers a tolerance of +10%, and consequently the E12 series provides twelve basic values. ‘The E24 series for resistors of +5% tolerance provides 24 basic values and, fs with the E6 and E12 series, decade anultiples (ie, 1, x10, «100, «1k, «10k, x100k and x1M) of the basic series. A further series (E48) provides for resis- tors with a tolerance of #2%. Carbon andmotal oxide rosiatare aro Relationship between voltage, current and power The power, P, dissipated in a ro- sistor is equivalent to the product of voltage, V, and current, 1. Thus: P=Iv whore P is the power (in W), Lis the current (in Ai and Vis the volt- ago (in V) ‘We can combire this relationship with tho Ohm's law oquation that wo and powaeny a ROR Example 4 What power is dissipated in a re. sistor of 1kO when a voltage of 20V appears across it? Using the previous formula gives: normally marked with colour codes met earlier in order to arrive at the Ae a _ that indicale their value and toler following useful expressions: R 1000 ~ 1000 ance. See Fig.24 and Fig.2.5 for the oy colour codes. P=IV =1x(IR)=PR =04w Fig.2.4. Four band resistor colour code Fig.25. Five-band resistor colour code Example: 0 at Brown Fretigt= 1 foe a fea” Senagt=2 | racmoaeion ings Seana sone Orange Motiplr= Ser 7,000 f (or 12K 10%) en (er3.340 22%) Ser Siver= 10% y I “and and ath coloured band] Seartans | | Sdenowedons | | eres | ee watever | [aoa ease ck ty " pea |] | sie | Bar Si 25 | Jose To] | ser |e” | Jie Teas net 12] | Sox [9° fa” || | soe [ot Sher | tox Seer [3] BRK |, we t2] | ase |, yotow |] | ea” | 00 veiw Ja} | Ber 13, Green 15) | orange | i000 cron 51 | Srance | i000 he Yotow | 0000 aee [6] | foam? | cco Volt 17) | cron | s00000 vot | 7] | Gaov | ioe, Sry |] | Bue” | so00000 Gey a] | Seer | toomen, 9 vwnte | 8 2 Everyday Practical Electronics, December 2010