Kirchhoff’s Current Law

Gustav Kirchhoff proposed two laws in 1845 that, together with Ohm’s Law, allow the analysis of electrical circuits.
Kirchhoff’s Current Law (KCL), also known as his first law or the node/junction rule, states that the sum of the
currents flowing into a node in a circuit must equal the sum of the currents flowing out of the node. A node is a
point in the circuit where two or more components are connected together. This makes sense if you picture some
imaginary positive charges flowing through a circuit (these constitute conventional current). Unless a node is
somehow producing, consuming, or storing these positive charges, then any positive charge that enters a node
must leave, and the number of positive charges entering must equal the number of positive charges leaving. Of
course, physically it is negatively charged electrons in the circuit moving in the direction opposite to conventional
current that give rise to KCL, but the same concept applies to the imaginary positive charges.

The diagram depicts a node between three components in a circuit, with   flowing into the node, and   and   
flowing out of the node. An equation can be written using KCL to relate these three quantities, by arranging all
current flows into the node on one side of the equal sign and all current flows out of the node on the other side of
the equal sign:

If any two of the three currents at the node are known, the third can be easily calculated thanks to KCL.

Note: When more than three components are connected, the node is considered to include all points of
connection between them. The following diagram illustrates how to create an equation for a node with more than
three connected components:
The KCL equation for the node in the diagram is:

Recall that a node is a connection between components in a circuit. The two connection points circled in red in the
diagram are not nodes because there is no component between them. The node is the connection between all
four components in the diagram.

Parallel Circuits

Kirchhoff’s Current Law allows us to analyze parallel circuits quantitatively. A parallel circuit is one in which there is
more than one path for current to flow through. A basic parallel circuit can be constructed from one power source,
e.g., a battery, and two or more loads, e.g., light bulbs.

Parallel circuits like this have the following properties:

 The sum of the current flows through each load is equal to the current flow through the source. This is a
direct result of KCL.

 The voltage drops across all of the components in the circuit are equal. For now, this statement will have
to be accepted as fact; we will develop a rationale for it later in this activity.

 As more light bulbs are added to the circuit, the brightness of the other light bulbs is not affected.

 If a light bulb burns out, the other light bulbs are not affected.
Calculate the current flow through the battery in the circuit shown in the diagram.

Given:

Required:

We are being asked to calculate the current flow through the battery,  .

Analyze:

We begin by drawing arrows to represent the current flow through each component in the circuit and labelling the
nodes using lowercase letters.

We can create KCL equations for each node:

For node a:   

For node b: 

We can also create Ohm’s law equations for each resistor:

For resistor 1:   

For resistor 2: 

Recall that for now we are accepting as fact the idea that the voltage drops across all components in a parallel
circuit are equal. This means:

We will choose to work with the KCL equation for node a as well as the Ohm’s law equations to solve this
problem.

Solve:

First, we will calculate the current flow through each resistor using the Ohm’s law equations:

Next, using the KCL equation for node a:

Paraphrase:

The current flowing through the battery is 1.1 A.

Note: In the process of solving for the current flow through the battery, we have completely analyzed the circuit,
solving for all unknown voltages and current flows.
Parallel Equivalent Resistance
Resistors in parallel can be replaced with a single parallel equivalent resistance. 

The relation between the resistances of individual resistors in a parallel circuit, R1, R2, R3, etc. and the parallel
equivalent resistance, RP, can be expressed mathematically by the following equation:

Solving for the parallel equivalent resistance of the previous example, with   and  :

The next step is a little tricky – remembering that we can create a fraction with the same value as any number by
making the numerator equal to the number and the denominator equal to 1, we then “flip” both sides of the
equation to solve for  .

The parallel equivalent resistance of the resistor network in the previous example is  . We will now analyze the
current flow through the battery in a circuit with the same supply voltage, 15 V and a single resistor
with  :
First, we’ll add current flow arrows and node labels to the diagram:

Next, we’ll create KCL equations for all nodes.

For node a: 

For node b: 

Now, we create an Ohm’s law equation for the resistor:

For resistor  : 

Recalling that the voltage drops across all components in a parallel circuit are equal:

We can now solve for the current flowing through the parallel equivalent resistor:

Finally, using the KCL equation for node a we have:

The parallel equivalent resistance of   has resulted in a current flow through the battery of 1.1 A, exactly the
same as the two resistors connected in parallel in the previous example.

A parallel equivalent resistance is the resistance that can replace a network of resistors connected in parallel and
allow the rest of the circuit to operate with the same characteristics (in this case, current flow through the
battery).

This concept of a parallel equivalent resistance has a few applications:

 If a needed resistor is not available, it might be possible to construct a network with the necessary parallel
equivalent resistance. For example, if you needed a   resistor, but had only   resistors on hand,
you could create a parallel resistor network with two   resistors that would have a parallel equivalent
resistance of  , and use this where you needed a   resistor.

 If you are analyzing circuits, it can sometimes be faster to determine the parallel equivalent resistance of
a network of resistors connected in parallel than to complete the same analysis using Kirchhoff’s laws
directly.