An Interesting Electronics Problem
An interesting electronics problem I encountered recently was this: Find the resistance between points A and B in the following resistor network
This looks like a simple wheatstone bridge problem, but note that the top right and bottom left resistances are R and not r. To solve this problem, we’ll use the concept of symmetry and a few tricks. Let’s start by connecting a battery to the circuit and labeling the currents and loops
We notice that there is no mixing of currents in node B. This allows us to disconnect the node and separate it into two components, both of which are relatively easy to solve.
The net resistance is now
Solving the loops gives us the equations
Solving these gives us
The net current through the cell is
We can now get
p.s: The \eqref
or \ref
commands don’t work for some reason. I’ll have to figure out why.