Question

What happens when one light bulb in a series circuit burns out.A. The rest of the bulbs continue to workB. Nothing will happenC. The rest of the bulbs become dimD. It breaks the circuit

Answer 1

In order to understand what happens to a series circuit when one light bulb burns out, let's sketch an example of a series circuit with three light bulbs:

If one of the light bulbs burns, the circuit will open at that point and no current will pass through the burned bulb:

We can see that there is no path for the current to flow anymore, because of the gap created by the burned bulb. Since the circuit was in series, all the components were depending on the same current, and this current now is zero.

Therefore what will happen is that it will break the circuit (no more lights will be turned on).

Correct option: D.