Resistor Value in Journeyman Exam

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Jay Myer

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I am new to this forum and apologize if I am not doing right.

If there is resistor color bands question in the Journeyman exam, if there is a reference info in NEC or American Electricians' Handbook? Or, we need to momorize this?

Thx!

Jay
 
It's not in the NEC. I don't know about the handbook to which you refer. I still remember the color code; my oldest brother taught it to me over 50 years ago. I can't publish the mnemonic that he told me, in order to help me remember it. It's not polite. (Note: After I posted this, I noticed that another member posted that mnemonic. I had to delete it.)

There is a "softer" version, but I don't know that one.

Here is the sequence:
Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White, Gold, Silver.

Welcome to the forum.
 
If you're not allowed to use a reference page, you'll just have to memorize it.
"Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet" are the colors of the rainbow, in their usual sequence, which you've probably already learned in another context.

But would this even come up on an electrician's exam? It's something electronic technicians use, but electricians never deal with resistors so small that they color striping is required. Everything electricians deal with will be large enough to be labeled with Arabic numerals, unless I'm missing something?
 
charlie b said:
There is a "softer" version, but I don't know that one.

Here is the sequence:
Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White, Gold, Silver.
Click to expand...

From Popular Science or Popular Mechanics, years ago:

Bachelor Boys Rush Our Young Girls But Veronica Goes Wild (only for) Silver (and) Gold

Black=0 Brown=1 Red=2 Orange=3 Yellow=4 Green=5 Blue=6 Violet=7 Gray=8 White=9 Silver=10% tolerance Gold=5% tolerance

The important thing to remember is that the numbers -=START=- with zero, and count up.

There's a nice picture at http://www.resistorguide.com/resistor-color-code/

They also have another mnemonic: Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well; Get Some Now!

Traditionally, you have 2 digits for numbers, 3rd digit is the multiplier ("x10^^n"), and a 4th band for tolerance.

Tolerance is the accuracy of the resistor-- no band, the value can be +/- 20% of the value in the 1st 3 bands. Silver-- +/- 10%, and Gold-- +/- 5%.

There are also resistors with more bands for the digits-- 3 digits, 1 multiplier, 1 for Tolerance (which has expanded to include other percentages), 1 for temperature coefficient.

See the link above.
 
charlie b said:
It's not in the NEC. I don't know about the handbook to which you refer. I still remember the color code; my oldest brother taught it to me over 50 years ago. I can't publish the mnemonic that he told me, in order to help me remember it. It's not polite. (Note: After I posted this, I noticed that another member posted that mnemonic. I had to delete it.)

There is a "softer" version, but I don't know that one.

Here is the sequence:
Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White, Gold, Silver.

Welcome to the forum.
Click to expand...

Ha, I was going to post the same thing. We just talked about this at work the other day, I asked my fresh out of the Navy guy about the one I was taught and he laughed and said no way would that fly these days.
 
zog said:
Ha, I was going to post the same thing. We just talked about this at work the other day, I asked my fresh out of the Navy guy about the one I was taught and he laughed and said no way would that fly these days.
Click to expand...

If it's the one I know, it's racist and misogynistic, plus it leaves out the tolerance percentages! :)
 
charlie b said:
It's not in the NEC. I don't know about the handbook to which you refer. I still remember the color code; my oldest brother taught it to me over 50 years ago. I can't publish the mnemonic that he told me, in order to help me remember it. It's not polite. (Note: After I posted this, I noticed that another member posted that mnemonic. I had to delete it.)

There is a "softer" version, but I don't know that one.

Here is the sequence:
Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White, Gold, Silver.

Welcome to the forum.
Click to expand...

That chick Violet, she’s a hoe



Bad Boys ____ our young girls but Violet gives willingly.

Gold and silver are tolerances gold is 5% tolerance, silver is 10% tolerance and no band is 20% tolerance.
 
Thanks ZOG couldn't recall the last part.
I thought I was using the pc version, the one I learned started with black ... later was told it was racist and we needed to change to bob brown still getting the black/ brown in proper order.
 
Just in passing, if you work with these for any length of time, you get to recognise the values without having to work out what the colour values are.
At a glance you can tell if it is 3.3kΩ or 33kΩ.
It also helps that there a limited number of values. We generally used the E12 series. Twelve values and decade multiples thereof.
 
The multiplier is easy to remember how to implement if you think about the third band being the quantity of zeros that follow the first two digits.
 
five.five-six said:
That chick Violet, she’s a hoe



Bad Boys ____ our young girls but Violet gives willingly.

Gold and silver are tolerances gold is 5% tolerance, silver is 10% tolerance and no band is 20% tolerance.
Click to expand...
That is the one I learned when in college. And though I don't find it to be all that offensive, that is probably the dirtiest phrase I ever heard come out of that particular instructor's mouth.

They will delete the phrase I learned to remember the trigonometry functions if I posted that - but a lot of dirty stuff came out of that instructor's mouth - made things easy to remember though:)
 
kwired said:
That is the one I learned when in college. And though I don't find it to be all that offensive, that is probably the dirtiest phrase I ever heard come out of that particular instructor's mouth.

They will delete the phrase I learned to remember the trigonometry functions if I posted that - but a lot of dirty stuff came out of that instructor's mouth - made things easy to remember though:)
Click to expand...
Sin is always an issue, and references to a tan gent get interesting too. :angel:

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
 
kwired said:
That is the one I learned when in college. And though I don't find it to be all that offensive, that is probably the dirtiest phrase I ever heard come out of that particular instructor's mouth.

They will delete the phrase I learned to remember the trigonometry functions if I posted that - but a lot of dirty stuff came out of that instructor's mouth - made things easy to remember though:)
Click to expand...

Indian Chief SOH CAH TOA??? Perhaps not Politically Correct...
 
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