D.C.
Circuits – Ohm’s Law and Kirchhoff’s Laws
Notes:
1. This is a two-week long lab, done Face-to-Face in the lab.
2. This lab will be done with your three lab partners, in the Lab Room in the
basement of LD.
3. You will submit a report on Activity 1 of this lab, and your lab notes for
Activity 2. Your TA might (not always) provide feedback which you
should incorporate into your later lab reports and/or lab summaries.
4. Turning in your report:
a. Collaborate with your partners on data collection, analysis, and report.
b. Turn in only one report but be sure it lists all group members as authors.
c. Lab reports should be uploaded to Canvas by the deadline in the course cal-
endar.
d. Do not include raw spreadsheets in the reports. You may want to use fig-
ures in your report that can contain snapshots of spreadsheet(s).
5. Getting help:
a. Your lab TA can answer questions during the lab or after the lab by email
or at their office hour (listed in the syllabus).
b. You can also ask advice from lab partner(s) and/or other students.
Objectives of this lab:
In this lab, you will use Ohm’s law to determine the internal resistance of a battery that will be pro-
vided to you. The Ohm’s Law states that the potential difference across a battery, V, is proportional
the current, I, through it, and the proportionality constant is the resistance, R, , i.e. V=IR. All batter-
ies have some internal resistance, r, and the goal of this lab is to measure this internal resistance.
Consider the circuit below, in which the battery of voltage, V, has an internal resistance, r (not
shown). The battery voltage is now “distributed” across the internal resistance, r, and the external re-
sistor, R. If there is a current, I, in the circuit, the voltage across the internal resistance is Ir, and the
voltage across R is given by V’=IR, such that V = V’ + Ir. In your lab, you will measure V’, the volt-
age across R, and the current I, and plot V’ vs I. You should get a straight line that fits the equation
V’ = -Ir + V. Then, from the slope of the graph, you can get the internal resistance.
These are things you will do:
1. Construct a circuit with a battery and resistor.
2. Measure current and voltage using appropriate instruments, connected in a proper manner.
3. Use Ohm’s Law to determine internal resistance of a battery.
4. Construct a more sophisticated circuit with multiple batteries and resistors.
5. Measure current and voltages at different points in circuits and compare to your predictions
from formulas you obtain via Kirchhoff’s Laws.
6. Identify possible errors that can occur in your experiment.
7. Minimize those errors.
What you will learn:
Please review the learning goals for the semester in lab in the handout from the first
week. In addition, this lab has several specific goals:
1. You will practice keeping lab notes in a paper notebook, computer file, or other format.
2. You will enhance the data analysis skills you learned previously, by applying them to real
data.
3. You will learn to distinguish between two types of errors that occur in data: systematic errors
and random errors.
4. You will enhance your understanding of how noise arises in data, and how to account for
that noise when interpreting experimental results.
5. You will practice scientific communication skills by preparing graphs and writing a formal
lab report.
What goes in my lab notes, and what about my report/summary?
The purpose of personal lab notes is to enable you or a colleague to reconstruct what was done and
why.
They don’t have to be neat, in complete sentences, etc., but they do have to be useful.
In a case like this, they should include things like what was the circuit setup.
Did you try different setups or take multiple data sets for same setup?
If you store multiple files, record what filenames correspond to what conditions.
The purpose of a report is to explain what you learned and how you learned it. The sorts of things
that belong here are
A description of each step you did as part of the Activities.
Any graphs or drawings to show to your results.
Explain how you determined your results.
Explain differences between calculated (theory) and the actual (measured) values.
Your conclusions about any relevant and useful information you were able to extract.
An analysis of the errors of the in your experiment.
EQUIPMENT
For this lab, the following are available for use: A multimeter (or voltmeter, ammeter), bat-
tery pack, multiple resistors, connecting cables.
DOs & DON’Ts
Don’t break the equipment.
Do consult with your Lab TA about the techniques you may want to consider as you de-
sign your particular experiment.
Don’t forget to record all data runs
Do use your imagination and have fun.
ACTIVITY 1: Determine internal resistance of a battery using Ohm’s Law
NOTE: Submit lab report for this activity.
Connect the battery to a resistor, R, in series. The circuit diagram is below:
V (battery with an internal resistance)
Connect a voltmeter in parallel across the battery to measure voltage, V, of the battery.
Construct the circuit above by connecting an external resistor, R, in series with battery.
Connect an ammeter in series with R to measure current through the circuit.
For a given R, measure V’ across R, and current, I, in the circuit.
Repeat for several different resistor values of R (at least 8 different resistors).
Plot V’ vs I. The slope and intercept of this plot contain useful information. Think about
what the information is and use it to determine the internal resistance of the battery.
Can you set up the equations for your circuit and derive an expression for the internal resis-
tance as a function of battery voltage, external resistance and current in the circuit?
Does your predicted value of internal resistance agree with the measured value? Why, or why
not?
ACTIVITY 2: Test predictions of Kirchhoff’s Laws
NOTE: Submit your lab notes for the activity. 2
Build the circuit shown in the figure below:
Measure currents in top branch, middle branch, and bottom branch of the circuit.
Measure voltage between points (1,2), (3,4) and (5,6).
Measure voltages across the two batteries, and the resistance of the three resistors.
Set up the equations for your circuit using Kirchhoff’s Laws?
Use these equations to predict currents and voltages at the points that you measured experi-
mentally and compare the values. Do they agree? Why, or why not?
