What is resistance tolerance?    1. Say I have a 20 ohm resistor
with a tolerance of 5%. What does it mean to have a tolerance of
5%??    2. jcsd   3. berkeman      Staff: Mentor      The value
is guaranteed to be between 0.95 * R and 1.05 * R.   4. berkeman
Staff: Mentor      Another way to say it is +/- 5%   5. So would
it make perfect sense to say that for this example that the
value of this resistor is guaranteed to be between (.95)(20) and
(1.05)(20) which is 19 ohms and 21 ohms? Is that the correct
idea?    6. berkeman      Staff: Mentor      Exactly. 5% of 20
Ohms is 1 Ohm.   7. Just one more question :biggrin:     Say you
put 2 of these resistors in series. The resistance will jump to
40 ohms but what happens to the tolerance? Will it double or
stay the same?   8. berkeman      Staff: Mentor      You can
figure that one out for yourself, using the equation for the
total resistance.      You know that the smallest you can get is
19+19 Ohms, and the largest is 21+21 Ohms. What tolerance does
that i