From the course: Electronics Foundations: Fundamentals

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Batteries in series and parallel

Batteries in series and parallel

From the course: Electronics Foundations: Fundamentals

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Batteries in series and parallel

- [Instructor] When designing a battery-powered circuit that requires a higher voltage or more current than a single battery can provide, I can combine batteries together in series or parallel. Many portable electronic devices, like this television remote, use multiple batteries to meet their power needs. When batteries are connected in series, they're linked together such that the positive terminal of one battery is connected to the negative terminal of another. These two AA batteries each have a nominal output voltage of one and a half volts. The total voltage across batteries connected in series is equal to the sum of their individual voltages, so these two AAs have a combined voltage of three volts across them. I like to think of this as stacking voltages, because the voltage at the negative terminal of each battery gets referenced to the positive terminal of the battery before it. Each battery in series works to maintain…

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