Electronic – Understanding “Current Draw” in terms of “Ohm’s Law”

currentcurrent measurementledled stripohms-law

I'm having trouble understanding Current Draw as it relates to Ohm's Law (V = IR).

I have a power supply rated at 5V and 500mA. I'm trying to power a string of LED lights. According to my datasheets, each LED draws ~50mA of current. If I have a string of 5 LEDs, that would draw 250mA. If I have a string of 10 LEDs, that will draw 500mA of current.

Here's my problem:

According to my understanding of Ohm's law, Current = Voltage / Resistance. As I understand it, when I add additional LEDs to my circuit, each LED should contribute resistance to the circuit. If this is the case, according to Ohm's Law, I would expect that current would DECREASE with each additional LED. In other words, as Resistance increases and as Voltage stays the same… when I divide V by an increasing R, this equation results in a lower I.

Instead, it is INCREASING!

Am I misunderstanding something here?

EDIT:

Yes, I was misunderstanding something there. The LEDs on my LED strip are wired in parallel, not in series. Resistances wired in parallel lower the total resistance through the circuit, so current would INCREASE coming from my power supply.

Additionally, LEDs don't function exactly like a regular resistors. As Voltage increases, current increases non-linearly, so Ohm's Law cannot apply perfectly.

Best Answer

Well first off I would say that an LED is an active device, which means voltage and current are not linearly related like a passive device such as a resistor. The resistance of an LED is not static, it changes according to the device's IV (current-voltage) relationship. That is more of an aside, since Ohm's Law is not as straight forward as it may appear when you are dealing with active devices.

However the explanation to your problem is fairly straight forward. You are adding LEDs in parallel I assume, each LED has a fairly static resistance since current and voltage are stable. I am assuming you are stringing the LED's in parallel. When you add resistance in parallel it decreases the total network's resistance. Look up effective resistance of parallel resistors and you will see.