Resistor Colour Codes

Capacitors are also numbered with this annoying scheme. A cap numbered xyz is xy*10^z pF. A 100 cap is a 10pF cap. I would have prefered strict scientific notation (which would have allowed 10ths of pF), but it was probably invented before the widespread adoption of that notation.

Inductors also have the same numbering scheme, but their numbering is in uH, not pF. Ugh. Inductors sometimes have the color bands to indicate their values.

Hi, I have a resistor that is showing up as 56.0 Ohms on a multimeter but the colour code seems to say 560 Ohms.

Green Blue Black Gold Brown

What does the gold mean?

Thanks for ya time guys.

the

Maybe it's really Brown and not Black for the third band?

Sorry Please Ingore.

Multiply 56 by 10 raised to the Zero power , wich is 1 not 10.

Charles

"Richard Harris" wrote in news:csoq9r$8vr$1 @sparta.btinternet.com:

that's:

for 560/10=56.0 +/- .56 ohms. A "precision" resitor.

but

I know, but I think of it like the third digit is just the number of zeros. Six to one, half dozen.....

Green - 5 Blue - 6 Black - 0 Gold - multiplied by 10^-1 ie. 0.1 Brown - 1%

Hence 56 ohms.

That's the way it's done with five band resistors for values below 100 ohms

Divide by 10 (multiply by 0.1)

I think of the third color as "number of zeroes." For instance, Yellow-Violet-Red is 4-7 plus two zeroes, or 4.7K. Other posters are correct that the third band is a power of 10 multiplier, but for ease of remembering and calculation, "number of zeroes to add" works for me.

The tolerance. I think gold is 1%. There are other color bands that can creep in in different situations. For instance, a gold third band means multiply by 10^-1, or one-tenth, which would make your resistor