Section 1.7 Open and short circuits (WIP)
Open and short circuits What is an open circuit? An open circuit is a circuit (or part of a circuit) which is not connected, meaning that there is no path for current to flow. (At this point, someone will try to tell you that an open circuit isn't a circuit at all, because there isn't an uninterrupted path for current to flow. You can safely ignore them.) // i = 0 across an open circuit // but v could be anything What is a short circuit? A short circuit occurs when there is a low-resistance path between some things In common speech, we might say "the circuit is shorted" or "there is a short circuit", meaning that somewhere there is a short We might also say, "the resistor is shorted out", meaning that there is a low-resistance path or "he shorted out the battery and it caught fire" meaning that some [ Practice: Which of the following circuits contain a short? ]