I have a resistor that has five bands.
brown red black black gold or brown (hard to see)
What is its resistance?
120 ohms +/- 5%
It’s 3 digits (brown =1 red = 2 black = 0), multiplier (black= 10 to the 0 power), and tolerance (gold = 5%).
thanks!!
I got messed up with the five bands. The site I was on only showed 4 bands.
The third band is supposed to be the multiplier!?
No, fourth.
1, 2, & 3 are the digits
4 is the multiplier
5 (if present) indicates tolerance.
NM
By the way, if that last band is brown instead of gold it’s a 1% tolerance, which is probably more likely given that it’s a 5 band resistor.
4 band resistor: 1 & 2 are digits, 3 is multiplier, 4 is tolerance
5 band resistor: 1 & 2 & 3 are digits, 4 is multiplier, 5 is tolerance
6 band resistor: 1 & 2 & 3 are digits, 4 is multiplier, 5 is tolerance, 6 is temperature coefficient
Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
According to this page,
brown red black black gold -> invalid
brown red black black brown -> 120 Ω, but a non-standard 1% E96 value.
Reverse from what you gave:
gold black black red brown -> invalid
brown black black red brown -> 10 kΩ 1% (E96)
So might it be 10 kΩ?
Nifty site, thanks for that link Crafter_Man.
Get Some Now
Gold = 10%
Silver = 5%
None = 1%
That is not what I was taught. The teacher said we would have to learn that one from other people. It think it took about 1/2 hour before everyone in the class had learned that one.
Big Buicks Run On Yellow Gas But Volkswagens Go Without
Was deemed acceptable for teaching to young impressionable minds.
Get Some Now still works. 
Originally, the first word taught in mine was “Black!” It got revised in college.
The PC version that I learned was Big Boys Race Our Young Girls But Violet Generally Wins.
But I concede that the other version has more punch, and is likely remembered more often.
Incidentally, note that the colors are those of the rainbow, in order(but without that confusing “indigo”, with brown and black at the beginning and gold and white at the end.
I still remember it this way as well.
Billy Boy Rapes…etc.
Just like the rainbow. The only reason “indigo” ever got included in the list is that Newton thought that seven colors made for better numerology. If you’re going to include indigo, then you might as well go all the way and include teal, chartreuse, and the rest.
Not numerology, really. If you read his Opticks you can see that he’s making an analogy with musical tones, and there are seven notes in an octave (excluding the top note, which we call by the same name as the bottom one, and don’t really include in the “octave”).
I suspect that we’ve retained the seven colors all this time because we wanted to let Roy G. Biv have a pronounceable last name.
For what it’s worth, at one time “indigo” really was seen as a separate color, although we’d be likely to lump it in with “blue”. the plant “indigo” is what they used to use to give Blue Jeans their characteristic color.