Definition of electrical Circuit
An electrical circuit is an interconnection among electrical elements.
This is a simple electrical circuit. It consists of a battery, a fan and a bulb. These fans, battery and bulbs are circuit elements of this circuit.
Types of Electrical Circuit Element
There are two kinds of electrical elements. One is active element and the other is passive element.
Active element: Electrical elements which can generate or supply energy is called active element. Batteries, generators, operational amplifiers are the common examples of active element.
Passive element: On the other hand, the elements which can absorb or store electrical energy are known as passive element. Passive element includes resistors, capacitors, inductors, motor and so on.
Most important active elements are voltage sources and current sources.
Types of Voltage and Current Source
There are two types of sources. One is independent source, and the other is dependent source.
Independent source: An independent source is obviously an active element supplies a fixed current or voltage, which is not dependent on any other circuit elements. For example, a 5-volt voltage source is an independent source. It always provides constant 5V. This is also same for an independent current source.
Dependent (or controlled) source: An ideal dependent source is an active element which source quantity is controlled by another voltage or current.
Normally diamond shape symbols are used to express dependent source.
There are four types of dependent sources.
- Voltage-controlled voltage source (VCVS).
- Current-controlled voltage source (CCVS).
- Voltage-controlled current source (VCVS).
- Current-controlled current source (CCCS).
Symbols of Common Electrical Components:
For analyzing electrical circuit or making a electrical connection for a specific place, at first we need to draw the circuit in paper or by computer’s application. Drawing the exact image of each specific element such as lamps, fan, pump or others is time consuming. So each element are expressed by different symbols. Here we will introduce some important circuit elements and their symbols.
These are the common components of electrical circuit. There are also lot of components except these. We learn these one by one, but not in this article. Because I think it will be better to learn those components when their applications will come.
What is Circuit Diagram
Circuit diagram is a graphical representation of electrical circuits. Where each component is represented by their appropriate symbol.
In above discussion, we will try to give a basic concept of electrical circuits. Electrical circuit is a huge concept. Almost nothing can be explained about electrical circuits by a single blog post. We will try to post important topics of electric circuit one by one. But if you want to learn more about electric circuit by yourself, then we can suggest you some popular books of electric circuit.
Here is the list of favorite Books on electric circuit:
- Fundamentals of Electric Circuit by Charles K. Alexander and Matthew O.N. Sadiku.
- ELECTRIC CIRCUITS by James W. Nilsson and Susan A. Riedel.
- Introductory circuit analysis by Boylested.
That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.
