Answer:
I hope that this helps you :)
Explanation:
We're getting into the holiday spirit here at the Department of Energy. Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care and we have strings of lights decorating our cubicles. While stringing up lights, I wanted to learn how exactly holiday lights work. Here’s what I discovered.
Holiday lights are a great way to learn about the flow of electric current. In a simple circuit, including one in an incandescent light bulb, electricity travels through a closed circuit, passing over a filament, causing it to glow brightly. The more current that passes over a filament, the hotter it will get, the brighter it will burn, and the quicker it will burn out. If the circuit is broken, or open, no electricity will pass over the filament and it will not light. If the current is too great, the filament will melt, or blow out, causing the circuit to become open.
But we want more than one light to shine on our Christmas tree or along the roofs of our homes. If you want to connect multiple light bulbs to the same power source, there are two ways to do that: either attach the lights in series or parallel.
When lights are attached in series, the electricity passes from the power source to the first light, and then from light to light until it returns to the power source. In this setup, when a filament within any one bulb blows out, it creates an open circuit in the wiring. As we mentioned earlier, when a circuit is incomplete, or open, electricity fails to pass through any of the wires, causing all the lights to go out.
When lights are attached in parallel, each light is on its circuit to the power source. If one filament burns out, it does not affect the remaining lights, as they each continue to be in a closed circuit with the power source
