Sometimes the colors are hard to make out. How do I make certain what the value of the resistor really is?
Occasionally the colors are jumbled or burnt off. The only way to read it then is with a multimeter across the leads • How do I remember this sequence of colors? Remember the color codes with this sentence: Big Brown Rabbits Often Yield Great Big Vocal Groans When Gingerly Slapped. OR Praveen suggests the following mnemonic phrase to remember the order of the colors black through white: B B ROY of Great Britain had a Very Good Wife • What is the tolerance band? Resistors are never the exact value that the color codes indicate. Therefore manufacturers place a tolerance color band on the resistor to tell you just how accurate this resistor is made. It is simply a measurement of the imperfections. Gold means the resistor is within 5% of being dead-on accurate. Silver being within 10% and no color band being within 20%. To determine the exact range that the resistor may be, take the value of the resistor and multiply it by 5,10, 0r 20%. That is the number that the resistor may go either wa
