Talk:1604: Snakes

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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i don't know how to add the omega sign for the units of the resistor in the transcript. i'll leave that to someone more skilled than myself Beardmcbeardson (talk) 05:26, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Just copy-and-paste! -N00b 108.162.214.77 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Or find the 'omega' symbol in Windows Character Map. RAGBRAIvet (talk) 08:37, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

To be exact, a 24Ω resistor would be red, yellow, black; 240Ω would be red, yellow, brown, and so on, along a well-defined sequence. Red, yellow on its own would be missing the final "scaling" colour. Gearóid (talk) 08:54, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

We don't need the scaling colour here, the snake is scaly enough as is. Matega (talk) 18:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code, a "black red black red black" resistor shoud be 2kΩ, not 24Ω ... -- Oicebot 162.158.252.119 09:30, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

The fourth band on a resister is usually the multiplier (the value gets multiplied by 10 to a power according to the colour); it's the fifth that indicates tolerance sbutler87

The resisteors that I have at hand are coloured the way I remember, Three bands of 'spectrum' colours (including black at zero, brown for 1, leading through the spectrum red to violet until grey at 8 and white at 9), the first two are literal, the third the power of magnitude to adjust up, and a fourth band (metalic silver/gold, to aid identification of the direction to read) as tolerance.
I know there's variations, and zero ohm (or effectively so) links are a single black band, but that's all I've ever needed to know, in my time. (When I don't put something across mulimeter probes, just to make sure...) 162.158.152.221 11:57, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
The last band is tolerance, and there can be as many bands before that as the manufacturer needs. It's always the last band, no matter how many come before. Mikemk (talk) 18:18, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


FWIW: raw image: snake-pixelated.png and with added math: snake-interpolated.png. - Frankie (talk) 12:28, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Does this mean a 200ohm snake is safe? (Red black yellow) Seebert (talk) 14:51, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

That would be 20*10^4 ohm = 240.000 ohm if I get it right? --Kynde (talk) 15:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
Red black yellow would be 200000 ohms, or 200kΩ (200 kilohms). Red-black is 20, and yellow is basically adding 4 zeroes to that. Just some random derp 17:56, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
Ups, I put in the 4 from the comic, 20*10^4 ohm = 200.000 (not 240.000 as I wrote at first). Thanks for correcting ;-) --Kynde (talk) 19:48, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
As far as I can see, it's black yellow red yellow, repeated, and red does not touch black... greptalk20:57, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Do they still use color bands? Do they still teach them to technicians? Should parts of this explanation be rewritten in the past tense mentioning that Randal is getting old? I though the bands were relegated to the dead languages section, right next to linear B, once surface mounted components came along. I certainly haven't used them since around 1990, and would not expect my younger technicians to understand them. --198.41.235.101 19:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I garuntee that they still do.--199.27.133.47 23:21, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
Being one who is actively learning electronics I can say firsthand that they still do teach color bands, and almost all the resistors we use in class are color banded. Just some random derp 23:27, 16 November 2015 (UTC)