Day 8: Thevenin's Theorem

Lab 8: Thevenin's Theorem

Thevenin's Theorem takes the argument that an entire circuit can be simplified into a singular resistance and then analyzed for the load on it.

Prelab

My team was asked to find the Thevenin equivalent circuit, which consisted of both the R(thevenin) and the circuit voltage V(oc) at the two terminals a and b (top left and right corners of circuit).

This is done by first "muting" all power sources by shorting all voltages sources and opening all current courses. Afterwards, we use our resistor calculating methods to find a single "Thevenin resistance" that can act as the circuit. From there, we analyzed the circuit to find a "Thevenin Voltage".

Both of these can be seen at the bottom right.
R(TH) = 7.699k Ohms
V(TH) = 0.46 V

Procedure:

After setting up the circuit seen above, we took a resistance measurement for the entire thing to confirm it aligned with our calculated value over the terminals A and B.

Measured R(TH) = 7.57k Ohms

We also measured the V(TH) on the circuit

The value gathered is really close to the theoretical value we got!
V(TH) = 0.447V

We decided it was a good time to calculate the percent error between the two Thevenin values and how far we were from the actual.

Okay so, not bad! We were within 3% or so on each value.

We then placed a Potentiometer (9.66k ohms max) in the place of the load resistance and varied the value of R(Load) while measuring voltage across it.

Choosing a random resistance (8.12k Ohms) we calculated the