09/03/11 Resistor recognition

Here is the picture we worked from today. It was a great image as it not only showed us what each resistor means, but it also was easy to learn from and remember. Another great study technique was the quote 'Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Without'. This quote shows all of the colours, from black to white, in their order, from 0 to 9 respectively.
With these aids, we worked out the resistance of six different resistors by looking at them only, then double checked the values with our multimeter.
The first resistor i calculated had brown, black, drown and gold bands respectively. As i had previously read about resistor recognition, i knew the first two bands (Brown and black) were the main numbers to be calculated. The third band (Brown) has a value of one, which means it adds one zero to the end of the value. The gold band at the end denotes that the resistor has a variation specification of 5%. I concluded that the resistor should have a value of 100ohms, and with a 10% variation, will be between 90ohms and 110ohms.
The second resistor had red, red, yellow, and gold bands. My calculations told me that the resistance should be between 209k and 231k. My multimeter showed 212k, which is within the spec of the diode.
My third diode had brown, black, orange, and gold bands. I calculated that, to be within spec, it should have a resistance of 9.5k and 10.5k. My multimeter read 9.98, which is near perfect in terms of being in spec.
The fourth diode had brown, black, green, and gold bands, which shows that it should have between 950k, and 1.05M. The multimeter reading was .993M, which is within spec.

One thing i found was that with some resistors, there is confusion as to which way it should be read. With this problem i found that reading it first with the multimeter, and then confirming with a visual check was quite effective.
After more practice I feel I will become confident in resistor recognition, and will be able to find values with ease.