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Introduction to Resistors
3 December 2018 - 0 Comments

Di!erent Types of Resistors

There is a very high chance that the "rst electronic

component you might have encountered is the humble
resistor, pretty and bead-like with bands of colors.
Resistors are the simplest electronic component around
and in many cases are brand ambassadors, so to speak, for
the world of electronics.

It is almost inevitable to design a circuit without the use of a

resistor. So in this article we will see what exactly are
resistors and what they have to do in an electronic circuit.
We will also cover the types of resistors that you can use
in your circuits.

What is a Resistor?
A resistor, from the point of view of math, is the simplest
implementation of Ohm’s law.

The law says the current #owing through a material is

directly proportional to voltage applied across that material
and the proportionality constant is the resistance of the
material at a constant temperature.

In other words,

V = IR

Which is the classic formula we are all familiar with, where

V is the voltage in Volts, I is the current in Amps and R is the
resistance.

Resistance is measured in Ohms, after the discoverer of the

formula. Since the Ohm is (for a change!) a rather small
quantity circuit-wise, resistors are measured in hundreds of
Ohms, thousands of Ohms (kiloOhms, kΩ), or millions of
Ohms (megaOhms, MΩ).

Resistance is analogous to friction. Friction (if you’ve been

to a physics class) is simply resistance o!ered to motion. In
the same way, resistance is the ability of a substance to
resist the #ow of electric current. In the next section we
shall learn how they do this.

How does a resistor work?

We’ve all spent our schooldays talking about conductors
and insulators. We know what a conductor is, something
that allows electricity to #ow through it easily. The insulator
is the exact opposite – something that does not let current
low through it easily.

These properties are a direct result of resistance –

conductors have a low resistance to the #ow of electric
current whereas insulators resist the #ow of electric current
to a large degree.

If we zoom right into a wire down to the atomic scale, we

can see that the wire is made of tiny atoms.

When electrons #ow through the wire, some of them pass

right through the gaps in the wire, but some of them hit an
atom and bounce back, sometimes electrons themselves
collide. This makes the #ow of electrons somewhat non-
uniform and impeded – this is resistance.

This also means that resistance depends on the properties

of the material itself, since the interaction of the electrons
with the atoms depends on the size and packing of the
atoms.

People talk about temperature coe$cients. While this may

sound a little fancy, we can use our simple model to
understand this.

Temperature coe$cient is simply how and how much the

temperature of a material changes with temperature.
Resistors have a positive temperature coe$cient, in other
words the resistance increases with temperature. Now
PTCs and NTCs make a lot more sense, don’t they?

Considering our model, when we heat the wire, we are

(thermodynamically speaking) supplying energy to the wire.
This energy is absorbed by the atoms which then start
vibrating. This makes it more di$cult for the electrons to
get through.

It’s like moving through a crowd – the task is in"nitely more

di$cult if the crowd is moving in a random direction than
when the crowd is still (which is a practical impossibility).

Resistor Symbol

The symbol of a resistor is a simple zig-zag. In some

countries people prefer using a box, but both symbols are
accepted in the electronics community.

The second set of symbols are variable resistors or

rheostats, resistors whose resistance can be varied within a
certain range.

A Simple Resistor Circuit and Basic

Formulas
Before we go any deeper it would be a nice idea to walk
through a really simple resistor circuit to know what we
are dealing.

Consider the following case – you have a green LED with a

maximum current of 20mA and you want it to run o! a 9V
battery.

Connecting the LED directly to the battery might seem like a

nice idea, but the moment the leads of the LED touch the
battery terminals…KABOOM! The LED blows up. If you’re
lucky, the LED will be gone in a #ash, if you’re not so lucky
you’ll end up with a lot of burnt LED matter.

What happened here is a simple case of overcurrent. When

you "rst connected the LED to the battery, some current
began #owing. This value was greater than the required
20mA, so the LED dissipated this as heat. As the LED heated
up, its resistance decreased (negative temperature
coe$cient!) and that allowed more current to #ow through
it and this cycle continued till the semiconductor die
couldn’t handle the heat and blew up.

What if we connected a resistor? We know from Ohm’s law

that V = IR, if we rearrange the equation so:

R = V/I

Since we know the voltage of the power supply and the

current required to safely light the LED. We plug in these
values and we get a resistance of 450Ω. Now 450Ω is not a
common value, so the nearest value of 470Ω should su$ce.

There’s another way of doing this:

We know that a green LED has an operating voltage of

about 3.5V and the battery voltage is 9V. So we would need
to drop 5.5V across the resistor at 20mA. This leads to a
value of 275Ω.

This is lower than the "rst calculation, which is because we

take into consideration the forward voltage of the LED this
time.

Now where does all this energy go? Just like friction
generate heat, resistance generates heat too.

Going back to our model, electrons colliding with the atoms

increases the energy of the atoms and in bulk increases
temperature.

We know that:

P = VI

Solving for either V or I and then substituting the values in

the equation for Ohm’s law we get two useful equations:

P = I2R = V2/R

Where P is the power dissipated in Watts, I is the current in

Amps, V is the voltage in Volts and R is the resistance in
Amps.

Of course, the resistor should be able to handle the

amount of power we waste through it, and that means that
resistors come in a variety of shapes and sizes:

Through Hole Resistors

Saying ‘through hole’ might be a generalization, but if we

categorically sorted all resistors by shape and size we
would end up with a nearly endless list.

Through hole resistors, along with the resistance, are rated

according to the power they dissipate. Probably the tiniest
are 1/8W resistors, meaning they can dissipate 1/8 of a
Watt or 125mW. On the other end of the scale you can "nd
resistors that dissipate a massive 100W.

Variable Resistors (Potentiometer)

Variable Resistor a.k.a potentiometers as the name
suggests is used to vary the value of the resistor as
required. There are many types of variable resistors, you
might have probably noticed the big knob types variable
resistors on old radios to tune the stations or control the
volumes. Apart from this there are small variable resistors
called trimmers which are used to "ne tune or calibrate an
electronic circuit after the design is complete.

SMD Resistors

SMD stands for surface mount device. These resistors are

designed to be soldered to the surface of PCBs and are tiny.
They come in various sizes which can dissipate di!erent
powers.

Different Types of Resistors

Apart from coming in various shapes and sizes, resistors
are also classi"ed according to what the active material is
made of.

Carbon Resistors

The resistive material in these resistors is made of carbon

or graphite dust. Since carbon compounds burn easily,
these resistors can handle only low amounts of dissipated
powers. Also since the material is a powder, they are not
very accurate and have loose tolerances.

Metal Film Resistors

Just like their name suggests, the resistive material is a

metal "lm. Since the metal "lm can be made or calibrated
to very speci"c dimensions, the resistance can be
controlled "nely and as a result these resistors are very
accurate.

Wire Wound Resistors

The resistive material is made of a wire. Since these wires

can be as thick as one likes, these resistors can be made to
handle very high powers and are often wound around a
ceramic core as shown.

Semiconductor Resistors

These resistors are implemented in silicon and form an

integral part of semiconductor ICs.

Uses Of Resistors
The simplest most often have the most uses, and the
resistor follows this statement exactly.

1. Current Limiting: As seen above, resistors can be used

to limit the current that #ows into a device.

2. Voltage dividers: This makes use of two resistors to

divide a voltage by the ratio of their resistances. This is my
favorite image to show people when they ask about voltage
dividers:

These circuits are really useful. Suppose you have a 5V

power supply and you want to power a 3.3V device, you can
use a voltage divider.

They also allow you to measure high voltages by scaling

them down. This fact is used by the humble multimeter; the
rotary switches on older models were connected to voltage
dividing resistors that enabled you to select a scale so that
the reading stayed within the range of the analog meters.

3. Current shunts: These are low value resistors that are

used to measure currents without interfering much with
the circuit under test. They have low resistor values and
high power rating. In this method the current to be
measured is allowed to pass through the resistor and the
voltage drop across the resistor is measured. Once we
know the voltage drop and the resistor value, we can use
the ohms law (V=IR) to calculate the value of current.

4. Pull up and Pull down resistors: A pull up or pull down

resistors are normally used in digital circuits to de"ne the
default status of the pin. Consider a microcontroller input
pin for example, when there is no voltage applied or circuit
is connected to this the pin can read either 1 or 0 this
condition is called as #oating pin. To avoid this situation the
pin is usually pulled up by connecting a resistor to vcc or
pulled down by connecting a resistor to ground. The value
of resistor here will be normally 10k.

5. Sensors: It might be suppressing, but most simple

sensors are nothing but variable resistors. Some examples
would be LDR, Flex Sensor etc.

An LDR for example are special resistors whose resistance

varies with the amount of light that falls on them. The
resistive material which gives them this special property is
cadmium disul"de. They are used in things like night lamps
and dark detectors.

Things to keep in mind while using a

resistor
1. Power dissipation: Again, never select a resistor that
has a power rating less than what you are going to put
through it. A good rule of thumb would be to choose a
resistor with a power rating at least two times higher.

2. Temperature coe!cients: This is very important to

keep in mind when dealing with resistors that are used with
high current or high temperatures since the resistance
drifts quite drastically. There are two types of temperature
co-e$cient one is called NTC (Negative Temperature
coe$cient) and the other is called PTC (Positive
temperature Coe$cient). For NTC the resistance of the
resistor will decrease as the temperature around it
increases and for a PTC the resistance of the resistor will
increase as the temperature around it increases. This
property is also used by some sensors like Thermistors to
measure temperature.

Conclusion
Resistors, as simple as they may seem, but their
applications are endless you can even build a DAC (Digital
to analog converter) but just using resistor (R2R) method.
Be it a simple Op-amp gain circuit or a complex switching
circuit Resistor play a vital role. We have touched all the
basics of resistors in this article and this should make you
feel comfortable while trying to analyze the function of a
resistor when you look at a circuit.

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