Potential divider

Imagine you have a cake, and you want to share it with your friends. You have a big knife to cut it, but your friends all want different sizes of cake. How can you make sure everyone gets the right size of cake?

Well, you could use a ruler to measure the cake and cut it into equal parts. But what if one friend wants a bigger piece than the others? You could cut their piece a little bit bigger than the others, but then how do you make sure the next friend gets the right size without cutting the same amount again?

This is kind of like a potential divider. It's a way to divide up a voltage or electrical signal into different levels. You might want to do this if you have a sensor that gives you a voltage based on some measurement, but you need to convert that voltage into something your circuit can use.

A potential divider is made up of two resistors in series. One resistor is connected to the input voltage, and the other resistor is connected to ground. The output voltage is taken from the point in between the two resistors.

The ratio of the two resistors determines the output voltage. If the resistors are the same value, the output voltage will be half of the input voltage. If one resistor is twice the value of the other, the output voltage will be one third of the input voltage.

Think of it like the cake. The input voltage is the whole cake, and the resistors are like the knife cutting it into different pieces. The output voltage is like the piece of cake your friend gets. By changing the ratio of the resistors, you can adjust the size of the piece of cake (or the output voltage) to suit your needs.