ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

E1 series (preferred numbers)

Imagine you have a big box of candies and you want to organize them into groups. But instead of just putting them in any group, you want to make sure that each group has an equal number of candies.

Now, if you have only a few candies, this is easy to do. But what if you have hundreds or even thousands of candies? How do you make sure you have equal groups every time?

This is where the e1 series (preferred numbers) comes in. This is a set of numbers that are used to make sure that anything that needs to be organized into groups, like resistors, capacitors, or even candies, can be done in a way that makes sense.

The e1 series consists of numbers that are evenly spaced out. The first number in the series is 1, the second is 2.2 (which is twice as big as 1), the third is 3.3 (which is 1.5 times bigger than 2.2), the fourth is 4.7 (which is 1.43 times bigger than 3.3), and so on.

These numbers can be used to make sure that the things you want to organize are grouped in a way that makes sense. For example, if you have 100 candies, you can divide them into groups of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 15, 22, or 33 candies. These are all numbers in the e1 series.

So, if you're trying to organize something into groups, just remember the e1 series! It's like having a special set of numbers that makes organizing things easy and even.