Tag Archive: ohm’s law


It seems that students often have difficulty with these circuit problems where you have to solve for the voltage and current in each of the branches of a compound circuit.  Solving these types of problems is almost like completing a sudoku puzzle.  The first thing you need to do is solve for anything possible, even if it doesn’t initially seem to be going in the direction of your answer.  Often times, this is simply solving for the equivalent resistance of the circuit.  Once you have the equivalent resistance, you then use that information to solve for the total current in the circuit.

From there, you have to take a look at the schematic and problem to find out where to go next.  If there is a branch that is in a parallel arrangement with the batter, you can use ohms law to find the current in that branch.  If you have a resistor that is in series with the battery, you know that the total current is the current flowing through this resistor.  If you know the current and the value of the resistor, you can easily solve for the voltage drop across the resistor.

As you move around the circuit counterclockwise, you encounter two resistors that are in parallel.  Because you solved for the voltage drop for the one resistor in series, and you know the total voltage of the circuit, you can find the voltage drop in the parallel part by simply taking the difference.  Once you have the voltage across each of these resistors (same for both because they are parallel), you can find the current in each of the resistors using ohms law.

Again, the best advice is to look at what is given, and solve for some part of the circuit using this information.  Each time you use ohms law, you uncover another piece of information that will help you solve another part of the whole circuit.  I find that keeping all of the information in a table makes it much easier to keep track of the things you have solved for as well as the things you are still trying to figure out.




Once you move past static electricity, and start thinking about how charges move, you move into the realm of ohm’s law. Before you get there though, there are a couple important things to think about. First is why charges move. When an object becomes charged, either positively or negatively, we say that it has some electrical potential. If you have two objects that have charges, one of two things can happen. Case one: both objects have exactly the same charge. In this situation, we say that they have exactly the same potential. Obviously, if we were to try to find the difference in potentials, you would get zero. Hypothetically, if both objects have a charge of (-1 charge unit), the difference between -1 and -1 is zero. Case two: the two objects have different charge, say -1 and -2. Here, if we were to find the difference, we would fine that there is a difference of 1 charge unit.
Now just having two objects with different charges in not enough to make the charge move. There needs to be one more thing. That thing is some path between the two charged objects. This path usually takes the form of a conductor, or wire, between the two charged objects. Once this conductor is in place, charge begins to flow. The charge will continue to flow as long as there is some difference in potential, and there is a path for the charge to move.
We’re not done yet. A potential difference is measured as voltage (V) with the unit of volts. The rate at which the current moves from one place to another is defined as the current (I), and that is measured in amperes. The final piece to this puzzle is the fact that even materials that do a good job at conducting electricity don’t do it with 100% efficiency. There is always some resistance to the flow of electricity. This is defined as resistance (R), and it is measured in ohms. The amount of resistance present in a material is a function of a bunch of things, like, the type of material itself, the temperature, the length of the conductor, and the thickness of the conductor.
These three pieces come together and are related by Ohm’s Law. Ohm’s Law simply states that V = I * R, or, voltage = current * resistance.