Physics Lesson 15.4.1 - Electrical Circuits. Circuit Components

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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Electrical Circuits. Circuit Components, this is the first lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Electric Circuits. Series and Parallel Circuits. Short Circuits, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.

Electrical Circuits. Circuit Components

An electrical circuit is a closed-loop or path, which forms a network of electrical components, where electrons are able to flow. This path is made by conducting wires - which allow electrons to easily flow through them - and is powered by a source such as a battery.

An electrical circuit must necessarily include the following components, without which the circuit cannot operate:

• A power (electricity) source (batteries or plugs)
• Conducting wires which act as pathways for free electrons
• One or more electrical components that consume electricity

There are many other circuit components, which we will discuss in this paragraph.

It is not suitable to draw the shape of the circuit components because this takes too much time and not all people are good in drawing (similar to traffic symbols). Therefore, scientists have agreed to use simplified symbols in order to represent the circuit elements. As we have seen before, a straight line is used to represent a conducting wire, two parallel lines - one long and one short - are used to represent the cell, where the long line represents the positive terminal of the cell while the short line the negative one, a square is used to represent the resistor and so on. A simple circuit that includes the abovementioned components is shown below.

Some of the most frequently used circuit elements are shown in the table below:

Now, let's explore more in detail some of the above circuit components. In this way, you will know better their operating principle.

You have reached the end of Physics lesson 15.4.1 Electrical Circuits. Circuit Components. There are 5 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Electric Circuits. Series and Parallel Circuits. Short Circuits, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.

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