Electricity
The Free High School Science Texts: A Textbook for High School Students Studying Physics
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Flow of Charge - Circuits - Voltage and Current - Resistance - Voltage and Current in a Practical Circuit - How Voltage, Current, and Resistance Relate - Ohm's Law Analogy - Power in Electric Circuits - Calculating Electric Power - Resistors - Nonlinear Conduction - Circuit Wiring - Polarity of Voltage Drops - Series and Parallel - Simple Series Circuits - Simple Parallel Circuits - Power Calculations - Using Ohm's Law - Conductor Size - Fuses - Important Equations and Quantities

Power calculations

When calculating the power dissipation of resistive components, use any one of the three power equations to derive and answer from values of voltage, current, and/or resistance pertaining to each component:

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This is easily managed by adding another row to our familiar table of voltages, currents, and resistances:

Fhsst electricity87.png

Power for any particular table column can be found by the appropriate Ohm's Law equation (appropriate based on what figures are present for E, I, and R in that column).

An interesting rule for total power versus individual power is that it is additive for any configuration of circuit: series, parallel, series/parallel, or otherwise. Power is a measure of rate of work, and since power dissipated must equal the total power applied by the source(s) (as per the Law of Conservation of Energy in physics), circuit configuration has no effect on the mathematics.