Nodal Analysis 1

The purpose of this lab was to design, build, and analyze a circuit with several power sources via Nodal Analysis. Once the circuit was built, it would then be compared to our theoretical analysis of said circuit. The importance of this lab to illustrate the value of Nodal Analysis in the case of several power sources within a single circuit. The following is the circuit we analyzed, and immediately after it is the work that we did using Nodal Analysis to determine the voltages across v1 and v2:

As the work illustrates, the expected voltages were as follows:

V1: 2.425 V

V2: 4.425 V

We then constructed the circuit, as well as measured the resistance of all elements that were used to construct the circuit:

Measured Resistances: 

Measured resistance of the 22K Ohm resistor: 21.9K Ohms

Measured resistance of the 10K Ohm resistor: 9.92K Ohms

Measured resistance of the 6.8K Ohm resistor: 6.76K Ohms

NOTE: It should be noted that all values of resistors were within .8% of their anticipated values, so the margin of error within the voltages was expected to be low.

We then used to Waveform software to determine the voltages across V1 and V2:

^^^^^ The measured voltage across V1 was 2.434 V ^^^^^^

^^^^^ The measured voltage across V2 was 4.372 V ^^^^^^

% Difference between anticipated Voltage and actual Voltage across V1: 0.37% Difference

% Difference between anticipated Voltage and actual Voltage across V2: 1.24% Difference

As the data suggests, the measured values of voltage across V1 and V2 were quite close to the theoretical values. This clearly illustrates the usefulness of Nodal Analysis to dissect difficult circuits involving multiple power supplies. It eliminates the need to necessarily build them to determine their attributes.