Mathcad Community Challenge September 2022 - Resistors in Parallel
This month’s challenge is related to electrical engineering. We have a simple circuit with an electrical potential of 220 Volts. Initially we have a single 10 Ohm resistor. Then we add a second resistor in parallel, with 10% higher resistance. Then we add a third resistor in parallel, with 10% higher resistance than the previous resistor. And so on.
- Calculate the current in the circuit for the single resistor case.
- Calculate the resistance of each additional resistor and current through each resistor for 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 resistors in parallel.
- Can you write a function or program that calculates the resistance of each resistor and current through each resistor for n resistors in parallel?
These calculations are fairly straightforward, so it will be interesting to see what tools – vectors, matrices, loops, plots, charts, etc. – that you use to solve the problem. As always, how you document your calculations is important as your worksheet will be visible to the community.
Here is an example of three resistors in parallel, as drawn in Creo Schematics:
