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Home Basic Electronics Basic Electronics - Kirchhoff's Law

Basic Electronics - Kirchhoff's Law


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Just as Ohm's Law is a basic building block for electronic circuits, Kirchhoff's law have to be understood properly to understand the complexities of electrical or electronic circuits.

Kirchhoff's circuit laws are two equalities that deal with the conservation of charge and energy in electrical circuits, and were first described in 1845 by Gustav Kirchhoff. Widely used in electrical engineering, they are also called Kirchhoff's rules or simply Kirchhoff's laws.

The two primary rules set by Kirchoff are as follows

  • Kirchhoff's current law (KCL)
  • Kirchhoff's voltage law (KVL

Kirchhoff's current law (KCL)

This law is also called Kirchhoff's point rule, Kirchhoff's junction rule (or nodal rule), and Kirchhoff's first rule.

The principle of conservation of electric charge implies that:

At any point in an electrical circuit that does not represent a capacitor plate, the sum of currents flowing towards that point is equal to the sum of currents flowing away from that point.
Adopting the convention that every current flowing towards the point is positive and that every current flowing away is negative (or the other way around)

Kirchhoff's voltage law (KVL)

This law is also called Kirchhoff's second law, Kirchhoff's loop (or mesh) rule, and Kirchhoff's second rule.

The directed sum of the electrical potential differences around any closed circuit must be zero. This law is based on the conservation of energy whereby voltage is defined as the energy per unit charge. The total amount of energy gained per unit charge must equal the amount of energy lost per unit charge. This seems to be true as the conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed into one form to another.



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