Group 2 (EE3A) 07/28/2017

Concept Paper for Circuits I

“Adjusting LED Brightness Using Resistors”

Most portable light sources have an on/off switch. But in some situations, we want to have
an option to control the brightness of the light. We can do this with the help of resistors.
An LED is a semiconductor which emits light when electric current passes through it. Its
brightness depends on how much current is flowing through it. So, we can control the
brightness of an LED by limiting the current using resistors.
Typically, LEDs can only handle electric current of up to 20mA. With this in mind, we want
to have a current equal or less than 20mA.

Where:
R = resistance of the resistor
I1 = current flowing through the LED
Using Ohm’s Law, we can find the required
resistance so that I1 will be equal to 20mA.
R = V/I = (5V-3V)/0.020A
R = 100 Ω
What if we want multiple levels of brightness? We replace resistor R with multiple resistors
connected in parallel that should have the save equivalent resistance as the original resistor R.
Here, we replaced R with 5
identical resistors (R1) connected in
parallel. Solving for R1:
1/R = 5(1/R1)
R1 = 5R = 5(100)
R1 = 500 Ω

The LED will run at maximum brightness (20mA) if five 500Ω resistors in parallel are
connected to the LED in series, like in the figure above. If we want a dimmer light, we just have
to disconnect resistors from the circuit. By doing this, we increase the equivalent resistance
thus increasing the current. If we disconnect one resistor, it will increase R eq from 100Ω to 125Ω
and decrease I1 from 20mA to 16mA. Two resistors disconnected gives us R eq = 166.67Ω and I1 =
12mA. By disconnecting more resistors, the LED
becomes dimmer until no more resistor is
connected which completely turns off the LED since it becomes an open circuit (as seen in the
figure) where current will be zero.