Voltage Dividers

Consider the following three circuits. Find the voltage across the bottom resistor in each circuit.

10 10 10

6V 6V 6V
5 20
10

You will notice that the voltage across the bottom resistor changes. As the resistor gets larger the
voltage drop across it increases. The total voltage always adds up to the battery voltage (6 V in
these diagrams). This type of circuit is called a voltage divider because it takes the Input Voltage
(the battery) and divides it into two parts. The division depends on the sizes of resistor 1 and
resistor 2.
For example, find the voltage across resistor 2 in this circuit.

R1 = 50

Vin = 9 V

R2 = 75 Vout

In fact, a formula can be found that will make the calculations easier. Using the symbols in the
diagram above;

Check the calculations you did for the three circuits at the top of the page using this formula.

Voltage Dividers are the basic input circuit for alarms. The input circuit consists of two resistors,
one of which changes its resistance according to some external condition.

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