ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Three-character marking code for resistors

Okay kiddo, have you ever seen a resistor before? It's a tiny little component that helps control the flow of electricity in a circuit. And on each resistor, there's a code with three letters or numbers that tells you what its resistance value is.

Let's pretend we have a resistor with the code "100." That means it has a resistance of 100 ohms, which is kind of like a speed bump for electricity. It slows down the flow of electricity so that the rest of the circuit can work properly.

But we can't always rely on just numbers to tell us the resistance value of a resistor. Sometimes, the space on the resistor is too small to fit a number, or it might get erased over time. So instead, we use letters to represent each number. There are color codes too, but that's for another time.

Each letter has a different value - kind of like how A is worth 1, B is worth 2, and so on. In the resistor code, the first two letters tell us the first two digits of the resistance value. So if the code is "1K2," that means the resistance is 1.2 kilo ohms, which is a little bit stronger than 1 ohm.

The third letter tells us how many zeros we need to add to the first two digits to get the final resistance value. It sounds complicated, but let's break it down. If the third letter is "R," that means we don't add any zeros. If it's "K," we add three zeros (because kilo means thousand). And if it's "M," we add six zeros (because mega means million).

So if the code on a resistor is "4R7," we take the first two digits (4 and 7), and don't add any zeros. That means the resistance is 4.7 ohms - just a little bit stronger than 4 ohms.

And that's basically what the three-character marking code for resistors does! It tells us what the resistance value is using three letters or numbers. Pretty cool, huh?