MCAT Question a Day

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>I recently saw a post that pointed out an error in one of the questions at mcatquestionaday.com.
I think there is another mistake for yesterday’s question.</p>

<p>You are given three capacitors of capacitance X. If you are allowed to place the capacitors in a circuit in any fashion, how many different effective capacitances can you get? </p>

<p>(a) 1
(b) 2
(c) 3
(d) 4</p>

<p>Given answer and explanation:
c) You can have all three capacitors in parallel, all in series, or two in parallel in series with another capacitor. This gives only three possible capacitances. </p>

<p>But the possibilities are </p>

<li>All in series.</li>
<li>All in parallel.</li>
<li>Two in series in parallel with another capacitor.</li>
<li>Two in parallel in series with another capacitor.</li>
</ol>

<p>So the answer seems to be 4 but it’s 3. ???</p>

2

<p>I haven’t done any kind of series vs. parallel work for a while, but wouldn’t the latter two be interchangeable, when you look at the diagram?</p>

3

<p>maybe it is four :P</p>

4

<p>It’s 3. The latter two are interchangeable.</p>