How Resistors Work in Electronic Circuits

Video Transcript

Hello! This is Ross on behalf of expertvillage.com. Resistors resist current flow. In this circuit here is LED, was being protected by these two resistors. They are resisting the amount of current flowing through. Otherwise the LED would have burnt out. So in this case it served also to set the brightness of the LED because of how much current was flowing through them. Resistors get hot when they resist current flow. As a matter of fact, wire itself has resistance in it. It is fairly small but if you have enough current flowing through it or the wire is long enough you will have more ohms in it. Ohms is the way you measure resistance. So if you take a resistor like this one here, which is fairly small. This one can handle a quarter of a watt of heat before it will destroy itself. These ones are good for a half of watt and then when you get into some bigger ones like this it is a sand block. Resistance is in here is encased in this material that will dissipate more heat. This is good for 10 watts. Most of the electronics that you will be working with will just use the small resistors, because you are not controlling a lot of current. If you are doing something like a motor controller or amplifier you might get into something like this, typically you will be using something small.

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