Circuits

Mark Robert Baker

Lecture 13

Contents
1 Summary of Previous Lectures 1

2 Direction of Current, Single Battery 2

3 Direction of Current, Multiple Batteries 4

4 More Complicated Circuits 7

5 Switches 9

6 Grounded Circuits 11

1 Summary of Previous Lectures

The goal of this lecture is to put together a more complete picture
about what we have been studying in the previous lectures. In par-
ticular, we will be applying Kirchoff’s laws to circuits (from Lecture
2) combined with knowledge of specific circuit elements (Lecture 3).
In summary, we have Kirchoff’s laws, the junction law:
X X
Iin = Iout (1)
and the loop law:

∆V1 + ∆V2 + ∆V3 + · · · = 0 (2)

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 We also have Ohm’s law for the potential difference across a re-
sistor,

∆VR = IR (3)
and for the potential difference across a capacitor,
Q
∆VC = (4)
C
For batteries we will use ϵ, the emf, as the potential difference
across the battery element. This is only true in the case of an ideal
battery — in reality the potential difference across a battery will
be less than the emf. However, in this course we will only consider
ideal batteries.

To add resistors in series,

Req = R1 + R2 + R3 + . . . (5)
and parallel,
 −1
1 1 1
Req = + + + ... (6)
R1 R2 R3
To add capacitors in series we have,
 −1
1 1 1
Ceq = + + + ... (7)
C1 C2 C3
and in parallel capacitors add as,

Ceq = C1 + C2 + C3 + . . . (8)
These laws are opposite to the addition of resistors in series and
parallel.

2 Direction of Current, Single Battery

We will return to a basic circuit to discuss the direction of current,
and sign of potential difference across specific elements,

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 Figure 1: A basic circuit consisting of a battery and a resistor.

The convention for the direction of the current is in the direction

from the negative to positive terminal of the battery (in this case, a
clockwise rotation) — this will be a positive value. If we determine
the current in the opposite direction, we will get the same result
only negative. In a circuit diagram, the end of the battery with the
larger line is the positive terminal.

This convention is slightly confusing, because electrons are actu-

ally flowing in the opposite direction (counterclockwise in the above
diagram). The positive end of the battery is at a higher potential
than the negative end, and electrons flow from a higher to a lower
potential. Therefore our direction of positive current is not actually
the direction the electrons are flowing, it is the opposite. We will dis-
cuss why this is later in the course when we discuss more generally
electromagnetic theory. Our current convention is that current is
in the direction which positive charges seem to move — historically
this is just because the conventional direction was defined before the
charge carriers (electrons) were properly understood.

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 Figure 2: The conventional direction of current flow.

For our purpose we need to know where or not the Kirchoff loop
law will have a positive or negative potential difference across the
battery. This depends! We can define a loop in either direction.
If we have a 9V battery, and we take a loop in the conventional
direction in Figure 1 (clockwise), then the potential difference across
the battery will be positive because the potential on the positive end
is higher and going from the negative to positive end the potential
difference is defined as,

∆V+− = V+ − V− = 9V (9)
if we go counterclockwise in the loop, we are going from a higher
to a lower potential, thus,

∆V−+ = V− − V+ = −9V (10)

Therefore depending on which way we define our Kirchoff loop
law, the potential difference across our battery will change sign. By
default we will set up our Kirchoff loop such that the battery is a
positive potential difference in our Kirchoff loop law, although there
will be some exceptions (e.g. two batteries in opposite directions).

3 Direction of Current, Multiple Batteries

The previous section makes it seem like it will be simple to determine
the direction of the current, and to set up our Kirchoff law. But what
about if we have two batteries in opposite directions? Uh oh,

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 Figure 3: A circuit with two batteries in opposite directions.

In more complicated cases we may have to perform calculations

to determine the direction of the current. We can simply choose one
of the two possible directions for our loop and calculate the current
I. If the result is positive, then this is indeed the direction of the
current. If the result is negative, then the current is by convention
in the opposite direction to our loop. Lets calculate both to check
this. There are no junctions, so we just have Kirchhoff’s loop law,

∆Vbat9V + ∆VR + ∆Vbat18V = 0 (11)

If we consider a clockwise loop, the 9V battery will have a pos-
itive potential difference ∆Vbat9V = ε9V = 9V and the 18V battery
will have a negative potential difference ∆Vbat18V = −ε18V = −18V .
Since we have assumed a clockwise loop law, we must also assume
the Ohm’s law for the resistor will be negative ∆VR = −IR, be-
cause in our loop law the clockwise current is the direction we travel
through the resistor to assign our potential differences. We will re-
turn to this point at the end of our calculation. Our loop law now
reads,

ε9V − IR − ε18V = 0 (12)

9 − 10I − 18 = 0 (13)
rearranging and solving for the current we have.

−10I = 9 (14)

I = −0.9A (15)

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 Therefore since we calculated a negative current value, the cur-
rent infact flows counterclockwise in our diagram. But what if we
had calculated the opposite direction assuming the opposite ratio-
nale from the beginning? Lets check below:

−9 − 10I + 18 = 0 (16)

−10I = −9 (17)

I = 0.9A (18)
We indeed get the same result only positive! There is a very im-
portant lesson here about resistors: in both cases we used ∆VR =
−IR, despite changing directions. This is because our loop law
assumes the direction of current, which will require a drop in po-
tential difference across the resistor. However, the resulting current
in both cases was the same with opposite sign. We need to substi-
tute our results into ∆VR = −IR to make sense of this. For the
clockwise loop, ∆VR = −IR = 9V . For the counterclockwise loop,
∆VR = −IR = −9V . So in fact the potential difference across the
resistor flips signs just like the batteries depending on which direc-
tion we take our loop. In the clockwise loop, the potential difference
across the resistor must be positive to match the negative 18V and
satisfy Kirchhoff’s law. For the counterclockwise loop, it must be
negative to satisfy Kirchoff’s law. The solution in both cases gives
us equivalent and accurate calculations for the circuit, therefore we
can solve the problem using either direction for our Kirchoff’s loop
law.

We also see from this example that it is possible for current to

flow both ways through a battery. The positive direction of current
is counterclockwise, which is intuitive based on this battery having
a larger emf. This is the basic idea behind charging a rechargeable
battery — we can use a larger emf battery to forces the current the
opposite way (from positive to negative) through the battery with
the smaller emf, in this case the 9V battery in the diagram.

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4 More Complicated Circuits
Now that we have a basic understanding of applying the Kirchhoff
loop law, we can consider more complicated circuits, ones that also
require the junction law, and the addition laws for resistors and
capacitors.

Figure 4: A circuit with two batteries, two loops and three resistors.

Suppose we are asked to calculate the value of current I2 . In

order to model this circuit we will require the junction law, and
multiple applications of the loop law. Starting with the junction
law we have,

I1 = I2 + I3 (19)
For the loop law we have three possible loops: the two sub-loops,
and the overall perimeter loop. It turns out only 2 of these loops
will provide enough information to solve the problem, adding a third
loop law will provide redundant information. We will discuss this
point. The three possible loops are (we will do clockwise for each):

The left sub-loop:

∆Vbat3V + ∆VR6Ω + ∆VR2Ω = 0 (20)

The right sub-loop:

∆Vbat6V + ∆VR3Ω + ∆VR2Ω = 0 (21)

The total perimeter loop:

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 ∆Vbat3V + ∆VR6Ω + ∆Vbat6V + ∆VR3Ω = 0 (22)
using Ohm’s law and the information about the batteries these
read, first for the left sub-loop,

ε3V − I1 R6Ω − I2 R2Ω = 0 (23)

The right sub-loop, something important happens, since the loop
goes in the opposite direction as current I2 , the Ohm’s law contri-
bution must have the opposite (positive) sign, unlike everything we
have seen so far where our loop and current were aligned:

ε6V − I3 R3Ω + I2 R2Ω = 0 (24)

The total perimeter loop, both batteries have a positive potential
difference since they are in the same direction in the loop:

ε3V − I1 R6Ω + ε6V − I3 R3Ω = 0 (25)

Now we make the important point about redundant information.
Suppose we add the first two loops equations:

ε3V −I1 R6Ω −I2 R2Ω +ε6V −I3 R3Ω +I2 R2Ω = ε3V −I1 R6Ω +ε6V −I3 R3Ω = 0
(26)
We just get the equation from the third loop! So in fact we only
have to use two of the three loops, because the third can be found
from a combination of the other two loops equations. Therefore just
working with the two sub-loops we can insert the values,

3 − 6I1 − 2I2 = 0 (27)

6 − 3I3 + 2I2 = 0 (28)

combined with the junction law,

I1 = I2 + I3 (29)
we are left with three equations and three unknowns! Therefore
to solve our desired problem (find the current I2 ), we just have to
combine these equations. To eliminate the I1 variable, we can use
the junction rule on the first loop law,

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 3 − 6(I2 + I3 ) − 2I2 = 0 (30)

3 − 6I3 − 8I2 = 0 (31)

now we have two equations and two unknowns:

3 − 6I3 − 8I2 = 0 (32)

6 − 3I3 + 2I2 = 0 (33)

we can subtract two times the second equation from the first
equation,

3 − 6I3 − 8I2 − 2(6 − 3I3 + 2I2 ) = 0 (34)

expanding the brackets,

3 − 6I3 − 8I2 − 12 + 6I3 − 4I2 = 0 (35)

the I3 terms cancel and we are left with,

−9 − 12I2 = 0 (36)

I2 = −0.75A (37)
Therefore the current in the middle in fact is going in the opposite
of the assumed direction (upwards on the diagram), with a value of
0.75 A.

5 Switches
There is an additional element we would like to introduce here which
was given in the second lecture — switches. These will be more
important next lecture, but it is a good opportunity to briefly talk
about them now. Suppose we have a circuit with some light bulbs
and a switch,

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 Figure 5: A circuit with three light bulbs, a battery and an open switch.

If each bulb has a resistance R, we can draw the scenario for both
the open and closed switch below. The situation is very straightfor-
ward. If the switch is open, then that branch of the circuit has no
current flowing through it. All of the current flows through the loop
ε → A → B. Using Kirchhoff’s law, the current everywhere is found
ε
to be 2R . In the second scenario when the switch is closed, bulbs B
and C are now in parallel, which drops the effective resistance based
on the parallel resistor law from last lecture. The consequence of
decreasing the resistance in the circuit is that the current leaving
the battery will increase due to Ohm’s law. However, less current
flows through bulb B when the switch is closed, which would have
the effect of decreasing the brightness of bulb B, since the current
is now split between the two parts of the parallel circuit.

Figure 6: A circuit with the resistance associated to the light bulbs above, a
battery and a switch.

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6 Grounded Circuits
The final topic of this lecture is grounded circuits. You have prob-
ably heard the term grounded circuit before. In applications, this
term typically applies to grounding for mainly safety purposes, to
connect the circuit to the Earth (“ground”) to avoid dangerous volt-
ages which can electrocute people. This also has practical purposes
for ensuring compatabilities between different electronic devices by
setting a common reference point for the potential. For our pur-
poses, the ground point this will simply refer to a point on the
circuit where we set the exact potential to zero. This is because
only potential differences have physical meaning — there is freedom
in selecting the exact potential — we will return to this point when
studying electromagnetic theory in more detail. The main point
here is that until now, we only considered the potential difference
across each element in our circuit. We had no information about
the exact potential at any given point. But if we add a ground to
our circuit:

On the left, we see the way we would symbolize a ground added

to our circuit. On the right, we see that by setting this point to
have a specific voltage of 0V , we can determine the exact voltage
at all other points on the circuit. This is straightforward — if the
battery has a 10V increase in potential difference from the negative
to the positive end, then the other side of the battery will be at 10V.
The 8Ω resistor has drop in potential difference of 4V, thus beneath
it we have a voltage of 6V, which is a 4V drop from what we had
from the battery. The next resistor has a 6V drop, which returns us

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to zero voltage — this is necessary because we must return to 0V
as we return to the ground. For our purposes — adding a ground
will no impact the behaviour of the circuit. It will only be used to
determine exact values for the voltage at specific points. In practice,
this will have the safety feature if a problem arises and a dangerous
voltage is present, this current will flow to the ground and cause a
fuse to blow. This is the only scenario where current flows to the
ground, other than this the circuit will function as normal.

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