Kirchhoff's Laws
Magno Urbano · 2019
This chapter examines the Kirchhoff's laws, created by the German physicist Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and how these laws can be used to find unknowns in electric circuits. To use the Kirchhoff's laws, it is necessary to understand two concepts: nodes and meshes. Kirchhoff's first law, also known as the Kirchhoff's current law, postulates that at any junction in a circuit, the sum of the currents arriving at the junction is equal to the sum of the currents leaving the same junction. Kirchhoff's second law, also known as Kirchhoff's mesh/loop law, Kirchhoff's voltage law, or simply KVL, states that in any closed loop network, the total electromotive force around the loop is equal to the sum of all the electromotive force drops within the same loop.