How to Determine the Resistance Value of a Resistor

Resistors are by far the most common components in most electronic circuits. However, since they are produced very inexpensively and often have round bodies, their resistance value cannot be printed on them. For that reason, the most common type of resistors (carbon film resistors) use a common color coding scheme to allow you to quickly determine their resistance value.
Instructions 1.
o

1 Determine the type of resistor. Though most resistors will be carbon film resistors, there are several other types of resistors used in many circuits. For example, wire wound resistors are used in high-voltage power supply circuits and won't follow this color coding scheme. Surface mount carbon film resistors don't follow the color coding scheme either, but have their resistance value printed on them. 2 Find the orientation of the resistor. A resistor is not a polarized component, it doesn't matter which way you insert it into the circuit. It does, however, matter which way you read the color bands. 3

Look for a gold or silver color band, this will be the last band of the code. Not all resistors will have a gold or silver band or will have five or more bands (instead of the normal three or four). If you can't determine which band is the first band of the code, complete this identification process in both directions. One value will make sense in the context of the circuit, while the other will not. If you still can't figure it out, you may have to remove the resistor from the circuit and test with a multimeter.
o

4 Memorize the following mnemonic: "Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts, But Vodka Goes Well, Get Some Now." Stopping to check a chart for every resistor will be very slow, but remembering the order of magnitude of the color bands is quite easy. This stands for black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white, gold, silver, none. The following chart gives their meanings for the first, second and third band:Black 0 0 x1Brown 1 1 x10Red 2 2 x100Orange 3 3 x1,000Yellow 4 4 x10,000Green 5 5 x100,000Blue 6 6 x1,000,000Violet 7 7 x10,000,000Grey 8 8 x100,000,000White 9 9 x1,000,000,000Gold - - x0.1 +5%Silver - - x0.01 +-10%None - - 5 Take the first and second color bands. Form a 2-digit number from their corresponding values in step 3. For example, Green/Yellow color bands would form the number 54. 6 Take the third color band and look it up on the chart. Multiply the number from step 4 by the multiplier from the chart. For example, Green/Yellow followed by Brown would be 54 multiplied by 10 or 540 ohms.

7 View the resistor's fourth color band as a tolerance rating. Each resistor can only be close to the resistance specified by the color bands. Carbon film resistors are very cheap to produce, but the downside is they're somewhat inaccurate. If the fourth band is gold, the resistor has a tolerance of +- 5% of the value defined by the color bands. For example, a 540 ohm resistor with a 5% tolerance can be anywhere from 513 ohms to 567 ohms. If the fourth band is silver, the resistor has a tolerance of +- 10%. Tips & Warnings

Some high-precision resistors have more bands and may not follow this color scheme at all and some of the other bands may be temperature tolerances. If you're unsure, test the resistor with a multimeter.