Thevenin Equivalents

Objectives:

1. Figure out the thevenin Resistance in a given circuit by:
a. finding the open circuit voltage
b. finding the short circuit current
c. applying Rth = Voc / Isc
2. Determine the smallest Resistance for a 8V voltage drop across RL2
3. Test and compare the Thevenin Circuit to the original circuit
4. Verify that the max power across RL2 occurs when RL2 = Rth

Circuit Plan

Objective 1

a. Open Circuit Voltage

b/c. Short circuit current and finding Rth

Objective 2

Finding resistance RL2

Objective 3

Data

Thevenin Equivalent circuit

Component measurements

Experiment

 Note: the percent errors are outstanding which i was hoping for because the nominal values were very close to the measured values of our components.

Now for the

Original Circuit

set up

data

Component measurements

Experiment

Note: again the percent errors are low. And even better, we get about the same measurements that were obtained in the thevenin equivalent circuit.

Objective 4

The picture above also shows the power when RL2 =  Rth

By using a variable resistor box for RL2 we were able to easily to change the resistance for the following tests to measure the voltage across RL2 and in turn calculate the power

Measurement/Calculations

The calculations show that the power is the greater when RL2 = Rth 

Conclusion:

The thevenin equivalent circuit was in fact equivalent to the original circuit. The experiment showed that the voltage across the Load was the same when it had a 824 ohm resistance as well as an infinite resistance.