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Circuit Analysis
Other Sites:
Wikipedia has a Wikibooks section that has some great information on the things that are discussed here. Check it out.
Basics:
Most relationships in circuit analysis can be derrived from Ohms law. Memorize it because it's simple. The two others we'll see a lot of are KVL (Kirchoff's Voltage Law) and KCL (Kirchoff's Current Law).
For the below examples here is our sample ciruit aptly named Sample Circuit #1:
Ohms Law:
V = iR
Voltage = Current * Resistance
KVL:
The sum of the voltages arround a loop is zero
In our sample circuit there are two seperate loops. Loop #1 is in red and Loop #2 is in blue. For loop #1, if we start at our power supply with 10 Volts and travel in the direction of the arrow we will cross two resistors R1 and R2. There will be a voltage drop across each of these elements and if we added the voltage drop to our orignal voltage climb it would equal zero. For example lets take R1= 5 Ohms and R2 = 20 Ohms with i = the current through the wire at that point. Our KVL equation for the red loop would look like this:
KCL:
The sum of the current into a loop is the sum of the current out of the loop.
