Remember Electrical Resistor Color Codes
Revision as of 16:28, 15 January 2017 by Kipkis (Kipkis | contribs) (importing article from wikihow)
Resistor color codes are something that every electronics hobbyist should remember. The old mnemonic was rather, well, disturbing, and a conscientious person would never recite it. Anyway, on with the better one! Write this down in a prominent place and you'll have it committed to permanent memory in no time!
Steps
- Here's one mnemonic "Bright Boys Rave Over Young Girls But Veto Getting Wed. Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Grey, White <=> 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
- Best method to memorize is - B.B. Roy of Great Britain Veto getting wed.
- Alternatively, most of the colors are those from the traditional rainbow. Black is 0 (as in 'nothing'), Brown is 1, then Red through Violet, and finally Gray and White are 8 and 9.
- In Russian language, you can use the following phrase: "Четыре коровы красят ржавый железный забор синтетической формулой, содержащей белок" - чёрный, коричневый, красный, рыжий, жёлтый, зелёный, синий, фиолетовый, серый, белый. By the way, the phrase is translated as "Four cows paint a rusty iron fence with synthetic formula containing protein".
- The multiplier band goes by the same code and can be read as "followed by N zeros", plus Gold for "divide by 10" and Silver for "divide by 100".
- Tolerances are something of a mess: Brown and Red are 1% and 2% (you usually spot them because they have an extra significant digit), Gold and Silver are 5% and 10%, and 20% doesn't even get a tolerance band (you will rarely, if ever, come across one of these).
- To read the whole thing, put the tolerance band at your right, and go like this: "green-brown-red-gold = 5-1-00-5% = 5.1K 5%". You'll get used soon enough, and a bit later you'll be spotting what you want at once. It's also easy to classify them by decade: red is Ks, orange is 10Ks ...
Tips
- The same code is used for inductors and capacitors, only that the "units" are uH and pF. That is, orange-white-red-gold is 3.9 mH or 3.9 nF, 5%.
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Sources and Citations
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code
- http://www.weerstandcalculator.nl/resistor.php. An excellent calculator. It also finds the closest standard value from different series.
