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ELECTRICAL SYSTEM
Types of circuits
There are three ways a circuit can be wired:
•
Series
•
Parallel
•
Series/parallel
Series
Series circuits are wired so that the current has
only one path to follow. If one component in the system
fails, the circuit will be broken and whole system will
not work. See Figure 7.18.
Switch
Battery
Figure 7.18
Parallel
Parallel circuits are wired so that current has multi-
ple paths to follow. If a component in one of the paral-
lel paths fails, the rest of the circuit will keep working.
See Figure 7.19.
Battery
Figure 7.19
Series/parallel
series and some in parallel. See Figure 7.20.
Lamp
What can go wrong?
an electrical circuit:
1.
2.
3.
Shorts
not designed to take by-passing a component in the cir-
cuit.
tion that chafed through, exposing the copper conduc-
tor. The bare copper will short the circuit when it
Lamp
touches a ground source.
Opens
back to the power source. A common example of this is
Lamp
a burned-out lamp (light bulb) in a series circuit.
Lamp
124
Series/parallel circuits have some sections wired in
Battery
Lamp
Figure 7.20
There are three types of failures that can occur in
Shorts
Opens
Increased resistance
A short is when electricity takes a path that it was
A common example of a short is a wire with insula-
An open is when current can not complete its path
Lamp
Lamp
Lamp
Switch
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