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Wiring in Parallel

Another way to wire bulbs together is to connect them in parallel. Instead of having one path through the bulbs, the path is split so each gets fed in parallel from the battery. Here is the circuit diagram:

parallelcct

When you wire the circuit up following the circuit diagram, you will find the bulbs are much brighter than when wired in series. If you use the meter to measure the voltage across each bulb, you will see it is the full 6V from the battery. Now try removing a bulb. This time only that bulb should go out, the other should continue to glow. The picture below shows the parallel bulbs.

parallel

Using the switch module, you can switch each bulb individually and control them both from the toggle switch. Try wiring them us according to this diagram

parallelswitchedcct

In this circuit each light can be turned on or off using a push switch and the whole circuit switched on or off via the toggle switch. This is how the wiring in your house works. Each light is controlled by its own switch and if one bulb breaks, it does not cause the other lights in the house to turn off as they are each fed via a parallel circuit. The toggle switch is like the mains circuit breaker you have in the house which switches electricity off to all the circuits in the house.


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