Kirchhoff's Laws for current and voltage lie at the heart of circuit analysis.

With these two laws, plus the

equations for individual component (resistor, capacitor, inductor), we have the basic tool set we need to
start analyzing circuits.

This article assumes you are familiar with the definitions of node, distributed node, branch, and loop.

You may want to have a pencil and paper nearby to work the example problems.

Currents into a node

Try to reason through this example by yourself, before we talk about the theory. The schematic below
shows four branch currents flowing in and out of a distributed node. The various currents are in
milliamps, \text{mA}mAstart text, m, A, end text. One of the currents, \blueD iistart color #11accd, i, end
color #11accd, is not known.