Series and Parallel Circuits

Electricity!

This topic is actually my favourite ever!

Anyway, that isn't important for you. Today I'm going to go through series and parallel circuits and when and where to use them and why. This is generally well understood by people which is good.

So here we have a series and a parallel circuit. Which is which and why? Check out my previous post for that.

Learn which is which and more!

So hopefully from the picture and my previous post you get the general idea of what series and parallel circuits are. Next lets go through the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

Series

Advantages

• Easy to wire
  

Why are they easy to wire? This is because all components are wired in one continuous loop. Imagine wiring 100 light bulbs all in parallel. You would need a lot of wire and a lot of time. If you buy cheap Christmas lights you will often find they are wired in series as it reduces labour costs and therefore the product is cheaper than lights wired in parallel.

Disadvantages

• If one component breaks the whole circuit breaks

This is because in a series circuit all components are wired in a continuous loop. If this loop is broken then the circuit will not work. When a component breaks no current can run through it. It becomes a blockage in the circuit and the circuit can no longer function.

• As you add components you decrease the electricity going to each component
  

This is evident if you put a lot of light bulbs into a series circuit. As you add more and more the light bulbs start dimming down until you can hardly see them

Parallel

advantages

• If one component breaks the rest of the circuit can still function normally

This is because if one component breaks and current can't flow through one loop of the parallel circuit, the rest are still fine (terms and conditions apply - something for the next post)

• If you add more components they still get a good amount of electricity
  

Unlike series circuits if you add more light bulbs for example then they'll all still be just as bright no matter how many you add to your circuit

Disadvantages

• More power is required.

This is because of something we will go over in the next post. It needs more words than I can fit in here. Simply put, it is because unlike in a series circuit when you add more and more the components (light bulbs) are still bright, so keeping them all bright at the same time needs more power. If that doesn't make sense to you then don't worry, I'll go over it next post.

As usual guys I hope you found this useful! If not, let me know in the comments and I'll re write it or make a video on it.