Circuit Power - AP Physics 2

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Question

Consider the circuit:

Circuit_1

What is the rate of power consumption in the circuit if every resistor has a resistance of ?

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Answer

To calculate the power consumption of the circuit, we need to first reduce it to an equivalent circuit with a single resistor. Since each resistor has the same resistance, this solution will keep resistance calculations as multiples of until the circuit is fully reduced.

Start with the two branches in parallel. We can condense R3 and R4, then solve for the total resistance of R2, R3, and R4.

The equivalent circuit now has three resistors in series (R1, Req, and R5), so we can simply add them all up:

Plug in the value for R:

Now we can use the equation for power:

Substituting in Ohm's law for current, we get:

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