[PLUG] Example in class today

[Erik Lane]

I assume you probably know, but since it's possible that you've got a
lot of book learning on basic electronics but not much real world
experience I wanted to point out a couple things.

That example in class was actually pretty bad. With the car battery
hooked up to the starter and the headlights in series. Of course if
they were ever wired that way neither one of them would work properly.
Almost everything in a car is in parallel with each other, of course,
except for the controls for those circuits.

But (and this is the troublesome part,) you also mentioned that if the
starter needed all the energy then the lights wouldn't get any, though
they would still get the current. If the lights were getting current
then they would have a voltage drop, and in every case the starter
would be a lower resistance than the headlights, so the lights would
use more power than the starter any way you configured that series
circuit.

I didn't speak up because you were just trying to introduce a basic
concept and thought maybe you were just dumbing it down for that
purpose, but those statements still bothered me some.

Erik