Combining series chains inside parallel branches animation
An animation that plays by itself on a loop: combining series chains inside parallel branches.
D.C. circuits · covers the O-Level, IGCSE, GCSE topic
Use it in your lessons
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More physics sims
- Combining resistors simDrag real resistors into the clips of a resistance board to wire them in series or in parallel, measure V and I with real digital meters, work out R = V ÷ I from your own readings and check it against the series and parallel formulas, and see that adding a parallel branch lowers the total while adding in series raises it.
- Efficiency: a motor lifting a load simSet the supply's voltage and the load, then time a small geared motor winding a slotted-mass load up beside a half-metre rule: read the energy in from a joulemeter (or V × I × t), work out the useful energy m g Δh and the efficiency, watch a Sankey diagram of where the energy went draw itself, and plot how the efficiency changes with the load.
- Electric field patterns simSwitch on an EHT supply joined to electrodes in a dish of castor oil and watch semolina grains line up into the field pattern of a point, a charged sphere, two points or two parallel plates; drag the electrodes, show field lines running from + to −, and drop in a small + or − test charge to see the force on it.
- Energy resources: power a town simDrag the faders on a model town's control desk to switch on coal, gas, nuclear, biofuel, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, solar and tidal power, change the wind, the sky and the hour, and see hour by hour whether the supply meets the town's demand, with scores for hours met, CO₂, renewables and rough cost; save your mixes to a table and sort the resources by renewable, from the Sun and available at any hour.
- Evaporation and boiling simWeigh a dish of water or ethanol on a balance as it evaporates, changing the temperature, the surface area and a desk fan's air speed; watch a wet-bulb thermometer cool below a dry one; then heat water on a hotplate until bubbles form all through it and the temperature stays at the boiling point.
- Floating, sinking and upthrust simLower a cylinder on a newton-meter into water, salt water or cooking oil from a displacement can that spills into a beaker on a balance: watch the reading fall as the upthrust grows, find U = weight in air − reading in the liquid, predict float or sink from the densities, and see a wooden block float deeper in oil and higher in salt water; cards show a hydrometer and a steel boat.