/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12734613
That's not a bad way of thinking about it. Since ideal wires don't have any resistance or "cost" to moving through them, you can rearrange your picture in any way you want, so long as the parallel & series connections are all the same. So rotating (1) 90 degrees wouldn't change the circuit, but would make it a bit easier to visualize with the gravity analogy.

As you get into more complex circuits though, it's better to know that for voltage, it's not about moving up or down the page like it is for gravitational potential energy. But, you can imagine the negative terminal of your battery (and ALL wires connected to it without passing through a resistor or other element) as being at a lower height than the top terminal of your battery, if your charges were instead masses.

So, in this analogy, the battery determines the "height difference." Everything in red is at height 1, and everything in blue is at height 2 (since the wires are ideal and so the voltage is always the same within a contiguous section of wire). So regardless of the circuit diagram's orientation, the difference across R1 & R2 is always the same, because the charges will be transitioning from "height 1" to "height 2" if they go across either resistor. Does that make sense?