During the Level 4 Electricity circuits we made series, parallel and compound circuits. We started with simple series circuits. These involve hooking up components in one loop. So one of my examples is, a wire from the positive terminal of power supply to a fuse. Then from the other side of the fuse to a switch, then to a bulb and back to earth again. If another bulb is added to the circuit mentioned before the bulbs will be half as bright. This is because the original 12V that the one bulb received has been split between the two bulbs. But the current in both circuits would be the same as the Amperage throughout a series circuit will be the same as it only has a single path to follow.
Parallel circuits are different because they have more than one path the flow of electrons may follow. An example i did was to hook up two bulbs in a parallel circuit. In this circuit the two bulbs remained bright as they are both receiving 12V. However I found that the amperage is now not the same throughout the entire circuit. This is because the current now has two pathways to travel. So if the current is checked on each pathway you will find that it is half the current if checked just after the Power source.
Parallel circuits can be found in the lighting systems of cars. All the dash lights and head lights at wired in a parallel manner. They wire it in this way so that if/when one bulb fails the others do not also go out. If they were wired in a series manner when one bulb blew the circuit would be completely broken and all bulbs on that circuit would fail.
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