Fuel Cell Car Circuit Lab:

Shawn Plesnick
Cam Piper
Frank Fulginiti
By building and analyzing a complete circuit, both in the parallel setup as well as the
series setup, we will learn how to measure and calculate voltage, current, and resistance. We
hope to be able to construct a circuit using a breadboard device as well as record the voltages,
resistances, and current with a multimeter. After we familiarize ourselves with these devices, we
can use the power law of P=IV to determine the power of each component in a system.

A multimeter can be used to measure many different values of electricity. The three
settings we will be using will do three different things. The first one that we will use will put a
certain amount of current into the system and measure the resistance throughout the system. The
second one will measure the voltage through the system without the multimeter inducing any
power. The third and final setting will measure the current throughout the system.

The breadboard we use is basically a template for building a circuit. It allows us to

simply insert wires into the holes instead of soldering or any other technique of connection. The
board is set up in sets of five going horizontally. These sets of 5 holes are all connected.
Therefore all holes are theoretically the same point on a circuit. We will take advantage of this
set up to construct a series circuit and a parallel circuit.

The first thing we did was understand that there are color combinations on resistors that
indicate not only their resistance value but also their percent of accuracy. After this, we
constructed both a series circuit and a parallel circuit with two resistors of known resistance
value (Resistor 1: Brown, Black,Red,Gold 989 ohms and Resistor 2:Orange,Orange,Brown,Gold
326 ohms). We found that the resistance of these resistors set up in series was 1315 ohms while
the parallel circuit was only 245 ohms. We adjusted the multimeter to the 2000 setting and the
black probe should be in the com port while the red probe should be in the VmA port to
measure these values.
We then attached the battery pack to the parallel circuit and measured both the voltages
and currents throughout each resistor and throughout the circuit as a whole. The measurements
were recorded as follows:
R1 Voltage: 5.83 V
R1 Current: .012A
R2 Voltage: 5.85V
R2 Current: .0122A

Circuit Current: .0242A

Voltage across the circuit: 5.93 V
Resistance throughout circuit: 245 ohms
V=IR
Next, we attached the battery pack to the series circuit and once again measured both the
voltages and currents throughout each resistor and throughout the entire circuit. The
measurements were recorded as follows:
R1 Voltage: 3.02 V
R1 Current: .0046A
R2 Voltage: 3.03V
R2 Current: .0046A

Circuit Current: .0046A

Voltage across the circuit: 5.93 V
Resistance throughout circuit: 245 ohms
The last section of the lab required the construction of a circuit using the battery and all
four resistors. The two 1 Kohm resistors were placed in parallel, while the 220 ohm resistor and
330 ohm were placed in series. The resistance of the entire circuit was first measured by using
the multimeter. The red lead was placed at the positive position where the battery would be and
the blue at the negative. This measurement was 1039 ohms. The battery pack was then

connected to complete the circuit. Steps were taken as in previous parts of the lab to record the
voltage and current.

R1
R2
R3
R4
Battery

V (v)
1.23
2.82
2.83
1.87
5.98

A (A)
0.0056
0.00282
0.00282
0.0057
0.0058

P (w)
0.0069
0.0079
0.0107
0.0107
0.0347

The battery was connected to the DC motor and the multimeter was used to measure the
value of the current in the motor so the motors resistance. The voltage is already known, as the
battery pack has four 1.5v batteries attached to it. This means the voltage was 6v. The
multimeter displayed the current as 0.002 A. This value was plugged into the formula of R = i/v.
This gives the value of 3000 ohms as the resistance of the motor.
In conclusion, this lab helped with the understanding of how a bread board works and
how to build a circuit. The measurement of resistance and voltage through a circuit was
determined by use of a multimeter and thus the current can be determined through the use of V =
iR. This lab shows how not every label is perfectly correct in their measurements. We were not
able to measure the amps because of the low values of current running through the circuit. The
battery was also short circuited once which may have skewed some values.