Circuit Elements and Various Laws

Lecture-2 (30th Sep. 2020, 9 am - 9:45 am)

EEE1001 – Basics of Electrical and Electronics

Engineering
Dr. B Rajanarayan Prusty
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering

School of Electrical Engineering (SELECT)

Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore
 Outline

• Electrical Concepts
• Electric Circuit and Passive Circuit Elements
• Ohm’s law

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 Electrical Concepts
• Electric Potential
– It is defined as the energy that is essential to move a unit charge from the
reference point (in general, a zero potential point) to a definite point
against a static electric field.
– It can also be defined as the energy per unit charge.
• Equipotential Points
– Different points in an electric circuit are said to be equipotential points or
having same potential if potential at those points are same.
• Voltage (V)
– It is the quantitative term of potential difference between two points in a
circuit.
– It specifies the energy that is essential to move a charge between two
points in a circuit hence it is considered as the potential energy source in
an electric circuit.
– The customary unit of voltage is “Volt” in respect of Italian physicist
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta and is symbolized as V.
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 Continued…
• Electromotive Force (EMF)
– It refers to the amount of work a source has to do in driving a charge of
one Coulomb around a complete circuit.
– Not a single device is ideal; even in case of a battery when energy created
due to the chemical reaction is transformed into electrical energy, some
energy is lost and the useful energy created by the battery accounts for
the potential difference across its terminals.
– Hence EMF of a battery is the potential difference across its terminals only
in case of an open circuit and the potential difference generally drop when
current is drawn from the battery.
– The terms electric potential, voltage and EMF have the same unit of Volt
(V).

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 Continued…
• Reference Point
– As voltage is a differential quantity so voltage at any point is always
measured relative to some other point called as the reference point or
reference node or datum node.
– Always it is convenient to choose zero potential points as the reference
point. But if any reference point is not specified then ground (potential
level is zero) is selected as the reference point and it acts as an electrical
sink.
– Voltages at all other points in the circuit are calculated with respect to
zero potential point.

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 Electric Circuit Elements
• Circuit elements (more specifically electric circuit elements) are
idealized models of physical devices that are defined by relationships
between their terminal voltages and currents.
• Active and Passive Elements:
– A circuit element is said to be active if it can supply electrical energy to
the circuit. Example: voltage source, current source.
– A circuit element is said to be passive if it accepts electrical energy and
then either dissipates or stores it in different form. Example: resistor
dissipates in the form of heat, light, whereas inductor stores in magnetic
form and capacitor stores in electrostatic form.
• Unilateral and Bilateral Elements:
– A circuit element is said to be unilateral if the conduction of current
through it proceeds only in one direction. Example: diode, transistor,
triode, etc.
– A circuit element is said to be bilateral if current of same magnitude flows
through it in both the directions. Example: resistor, inductor, capacitor.
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 Continued…
• Ohm’s Law
– Ohm’s law is defined as “At a constant temperature and zero magnetic
fields, the amount of electric current passing through a metallic conductor
is directly proportional to the potential difference across the conductor
terminal.”
– Mathematically we can express Ohm’s law using V (potential difference
across the conductor terminal points), I (current flowing through the
conductor) and R (Resistance offered by the conductor) as V = IR.
– It is noteworthy that this law doesn’t apply strictly to materials that are
non-metallic and only holds suitable for metallic conductors. This law
reveals one of the most vital relationships in electrical engineering and is
used more frequently.

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 Continued…
• Linear and Nonlinear Elements:
– A circuit element is said to be linear if it’s V-I characteristics is a straight
line passing through the origin. All linear elements obey Ohm’s law.
Example: resistor, inductor, capacitor.
– An element is said to be non-linear if it’s V-I characteristics is non-linear.
Non-linear elements do not obey Ohm’s law. Example: diode, transistor,
etc.
• Note: In linear circuit the value of the circuit parameters (resistor, inductor and
capacitor) are constant. The parameter value does not change with respect to voltage
and current. On the other hand, in non-linear circuit, the parameter values differ with
respect voltage and current, i.e. the parameter values are not constant.
• Lumped and Distributed Elements
– Physically noticeable circuit elements are called lumped elements.
Examples of lumped element are resistor, inductor, capacitor etc.
– The elements that cannot be electrically separable and individually
isolated are called as distributed elements. Examples of distributed
elements are transmission line parameters.
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 Electric Circuit
• An electric circuit is a connection of circuit elements (active as well as
passive) into one or more closed loops.

• Node: It is a point in a circuit where two or more circuit elements

are connected.
– In the circuit there are 5 circuit elements e1, e2, e3, e4 and e5. These five
elements are connected to each other with the help of three nodes.
– Frequently committed mistake: Most of the time the reader is under the
impression that the points a, b, …, g, and h all are 8 nodes of the circuit.
But as ab, cd, ef, fg and gh are the wires not the elements hence a and b, c
and d and e, f, g and h will act as node-1, node-2 and node-3 respectively.
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 Continued…
• Degree of a node
– It indicates the number of circuit elements connected to a node.
– If it is more than 2 then the node is a “junction”. A node present in any
circuit can never have a degree of 1.
• Terminal
– It is that set of points in the circuit (otherwise known as terminal points)
where the devices from outside are accessible. With the help of terminal
points both application of excitation and measurement of response (with
the help of any measuring instrument) can be done.
• Loop
– It is any closed path of a circuit where no node is encountered more than
once. To find any loop in an electric circuit, start at a node in the circuit
and start traveling from this node along a path back to the same node but
ensure that not a single node is encountered more than once. Loop can
also be defined as a closed path of a circuit that may contain any other
closed path inside it.
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 Continued…
• Mesh
– It is that special loop that does not contain any other loop(s) inside it. All
meshes can be said to be loops, but the reverse is not valid.
• Branch
– It is a part of any electric circuit consisting of one or more circuit elements
(connected in series) between two junctions.
– A branch can never be a closed path. However, for a single loop circuit, the
closed path can be considered as a branch.
– The braches that are common to any two meshes in a circuit are called an
internal branch; otherwise, they are called as an outer branch.
– Simply a wire connected between two nodes without any elements can
never be considered as a branch.
– Note: When one of the elements of a branch is open-circuited, the current
in other elements of the branch will also be zero. Hence the remaining
portion of the branch can be removed as its presence in the circuit does
not affect the circuit variables.
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 Continued…
• Open Circuit and Short Circuit
– A circuit element is said to be open or open-circuited if the current
flowing through it is zero regardless of the voltage across it, i.e., I = 0 A for
all V.
– A circuit element is said to be short or short-circuited if the voltage across
it is zero regardless of the magnitude of the current flowing through it,
i.e., V = 0 V for all I.

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 Thank you

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