Electricity Blog
- Definition of Current & Voltage
-A voltage is the measure of potential energy split between two branches, acting as the electrical force or push that moves negatively charged electrons through a conductor while a current is the flow of electrical charge (electrons) moving past a specific point in a circuit.
-The difference between current and voltage is… that voltage is a force that offers help to the current and current is a flow.
- Explain why the bulbs in your parallel circuit are brighter/dimmer than bulbs placed in series. Refer to how both voltage and current behave in your answer
-The lightbulbs in the parallel circuit are brighter/dimmer because each lightbulb has different pathways of their own which will change the light of each lightbulb even though they use the same energy that is given while a series circuit is going in a loop, no different pathways.
The lightbulb in a parallel circuit all use the same electricity source. When a lightbulb goes dim, less electrons are flowing through it while more electrons flow through the other lightbulbs which makes it glow brighter.
The lightbulbs in a parallel circuit are receiving full voltage from the power source. Each bulb with its very own branch connects directly back to the power source, when higher voltage is being given (which means more electrical is being used) it causes the lightbulb to become brighter. Adding more lightbulbs can lower the total resistance of the whole circuit and lets the power source supply more total current without needing to take away any voltage from each individual bulb.
How does voltage and current behave? (needed to be written down with my answer above).
In a parallel circuit, the voltage stays the same across every branch connected and keeps the energy from the power source equal, while the current divides among the separate paths but each branch gets a different amount of current depending on its resistance (though they all equal back to the power source).
Circuit Diagram
On PHET
