staff@slashgear.com (Rob Rich)
2024-04-25 18:15:15
www.slashgear.com
As explained by Arduino to Go, each color band on the resistor corresponds to a number but this can differ depending on the band’s placement. It’s not complicated, but the sheer number of colors and how their placement can affect a resistor’s Ohm value makes trying to memorize everything somewhat challenging. In essence (again, depending on placement):
- Brown is one, or a multiplier of 10.
- Red is two, or a multiplier of 100.
- Orange is three, or a 1,000 multiplier.
- Yellow is four, or a multiplier of 10,000.
- Green is five, or a multiplier of 100,000.
- Blue is six, or a 1,000,000 multiplier.
- Purple is seven, but has no multiplier.
- Grey is eight, also with no multiplier.
- White is nine, no multiplier.
- Black is a zero, or a multiplier of one.
Silver and gold are the two exceptions to this pattern in that they don’t represent a number or multiplier. Instead, they indicate a 10- to 5-percent (respectively) range in accuracy — meaning a gold band resistor could have a 5-percent higher or lower Ohms value due to possible variance in the manufacturing process.