Follow the Wire, Then Flip the Sum

You'll learnhow to read series and parallel off the wiring, finish a parallel reduction with the flip, and treat a battery's label as its emf rather than what its terminals deliver.

Two resistors drawn side by side are not parallel because of how they are drawn. They are parallel if they share both runs of wire — and once you can read that, any network shrinks to one number. Twelve short steps; press Next for each one.

12 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · FOLLOW THE WIRE · FLIP THE SUM · METERS IN PLACE · v2

shared runs mean parallel · and the last step of the reduction is a flip

Before you start

What you're looking at

A 12 volt battery driving three resistors, one up front and two side by side. Each unbroken run of wire gets its own colour.

The question

Which resistors really work side by side, and how do the volts and amps get shared?

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