Test Parallel Circuits | OhmCheck.com

How to test a parallel circuit See Series circuit

Summary: Find out how to test and read parallel electrical circuits in this tutorial.

A parallel circuit is a circuit in which the resistors are arranged with their heads connected together, and their tails connected together. For simplicity, we will use a drawing of a parallel circuit using resistors.

The total resistance of a group of resistors in parallel is found by adding up the reciprocals of the resistance values, and then taking the reciprocal of the total.

So for example:

parallel circuit

R₁=10k Ω, R₂=2k Ω, R₃=1k Ω

1/10 + 1/2 + 1/1 = 8/5 so the total resistance would be 5/8k Ohms, or 625 Ohms.

Total resistance in a parallel circuit is always less than the smallest resistor in the circuit. This is because you are adding conductors into the circuit when you add a resistor in parallel. And as conductance goes up, resistance goes down. Parallel circuits will continue to operate even if one of the parallel components fail, because the circuit also bypasses each component.

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