The Anatomy of a Carbon Resistor
Look closely at the carbon resistor. We have a small cylindrical component with four distinct colored bands painted on it. These bands aren't just for decoration—they are a universal language used by engineers and physicists to communicate the exact resistance value and its manufacturing tolerance. Because resistors are often too small to print numbers on, this color-coding system is an elegant and practical solution.
The Master Formula
To decode this visual language, we use a simple but powerful formula:
Here is how it works: The first two bands, A and B, give us the first two significant digits of the resistance. The third band, C, acts as the decimal multiplier, meaning we multiply the significant digits by 10C. Finally, the fourth band, D, tells us the tolerance percentage, which indicates how much the actual resistance might vary from the stated value due to manufacturing variations.
Decoding the Bands
Now, let's identify the colors from our specific figure and map them to their numerical values using the standard color code chart.
The first band is Red, which corresponds to the number 2.
The second band is Violet, which corresponds to the number 7.
The third band is Orange, which means our multiplier is 103.
Finally, the fourth band is Silver, which indicates a tolerance of ±10%.
Final Calculation
Let's carefully substitute these values into our master formula. We place the first two digits side-by-side (do not add them!) to get 27.
Since 103 Ω is exactly equal to 1 kΩ, we can elegantly rewrite our final answer as:
This perfectly matches option (c). It's a straightforward and highly scoring concept for JEE, provided you remember the color sequence accurately!