All 27 Resistor Colour Code flashcards. Free.
The whole deck, not a sample — Resistor Colour Code is 27 cards, which is no longer than the 30 we give away on every deck, so there is nothing left to charge for. 13 pages, US Letter, black and white. Grades 9–12.
No account, no email, no card details.
13 pages, and the backs are already right
Every front sheet is followed by its own back sheet with the rows reversed. Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and answer number 7 is behind question number 7. Print a deck you built yourself, flip on the short edge, and every answer lands on the wrong card — which nobody finds out until sixty cards have been cut apart.
- 27 cards — counted out of the file, not rounded up
- Eight cards a sheet, with cut guides
- US Letter PDF, black and white, photocopier-friendly
- Print a set per student, every class, every year
27 cards. There are exactly ten digit colours (black 0 to white 9), two more colour cards for gold and silver, and one 'no band' case — thirteen cards. Pink is also never a digit (it is the ×10⁻³ multiplier in IEC 60062:2016) and is named on the never-a-digit card rather than getting a card of its own. The other fourteen are the seven band-order and reading rules for 4-, 5- and 6-band parts and seven worked readings that between them exercise every rule. Further examples would only repeat the same thirteen facts, so the deck stops.
Every card here is cited to two independent sources
Two different organisations — not a standards body and a website reprinting it — and a script refuses the card if the two disagree, so the check runs on every card rather than on the ones somebody remembered to look at. A second specialist then re-verified this deck from sources of their own, without reading our citations first. A further 5,420 cards across 30 other decks were read end to end by a subject specialist instead, and we say which is which on every deck rather than averaging the two into one flattering word.
What 27 printed cards do that a screen does not
A phone deck is one card at a time. A printed deck is a pile you can split: the ones you know, the ones you nearly know, and the ones you keep missing. That third pile is the entire study session, and it is the thing a scrolling app hides from you.
- Print once, use all year. The licence covers a set per student, every class, every year.
- No device, no login, no data. Works in a cover lesson, on a bus, or at a kitchen table. Grades 9–12, filed under career, tech & modern.
- Change what you disagree with. Every card loads into the free maker on this site. Reword it, drop it, add your own, reprint.
Here are all 27 cards
Check them against your own textbook before you spend anything.
- Black
- Digit 0 — multiplier ×1; no tolerance meaning
- Brown
- Digit 1 — multiplier ×10; tolerance ±1%
- Red
- Digit 2 — multiplier ×100; tolerance ±2%
- Orange
- Digit 3 — multiplier ×1 k; tolerance ±0.05% (IEC 60062:2016)
- Yellow
- Digit 4 — multiplier ×10 k; tolerance ±0.02% (IEC 60062:2016)
- Green
- Digit 5 — multiplier ×100 k; tolerance ±0.5%
- Blue
- Digit 6 — multiplier ×1 M; tolerance ±0.25%
- Violet
- Digit 7 — multiplier ×10 M; tolerance ±0.1%
- Grey
- Digit 8 — multiplier ×100 M; tolerance ±0.01% (IEC 60062:2016)
- White
- Digit 9 — multiplier ×1 G; not a tolerance colour
- Gold
- Not a digit — multiplier ×0.1; tolerance ±5%
- Silver
- Not a digit — multiplier ×0.01; tolerance ±10%
- No fourth band at all (3 bands only)
- Tolerance ±20% — the widest grade; the two digits and multiplier are read as usual
- 4-band resistor — what is each band?
- Digit, digit, multiplier, tolerance — 2 significant figures
- 5-band resistor — what is each band?
- Digit, digit, digit, multiplier, tolerance — 3 significant figures
- 6-band resistor — what does the extra band add?
- The 5-band reading plus a sixth band: temperature coefficient, in ppm/K
- Which end of the resistor do you read from?
- From the end whose band is nearest a lead — the tolerance band is the wider one, at least 1.5× the others
- Which colours are never a digit band?
- Gold, silver and pink — gold and silver serve as a multiplier or a tolerance, pink only as ×0.001
- What does the multiplier band do?
- Multiplies the digits by its power of ten — orange = ×1 k, so digits 47 give 47 kΩ
- Which standard defines the resistor colour code?
- IEC 60062 — Marking codes for resistors and capacitors; it covers value, tolerance and TCR
- 4-band: brown, black, red, gold
- 1 kΩ ±5% — digits 10, ×100
- 4-band: yellow, violet, orange, silver
- 47 kΩ ±10% — digits 47, ×1 k
- 4-band: orange, orange, brown, gold
- 330 Ω ±5% — digits 33, ×10
- 4-band: green, blue, gold, gold
- 5.6 Ω ±5% — digits 56, ×0.1
- 5-band: brown, green, black, red, brown
- 15 kΩ ±1% — digits 150, ×100
- 5-band: red, red, black, gold, brown
- 22 Ω ±1% — digits 220, ×0.1
- 4-band: blue, grey, brown, gold
- 680 Ω ±5% — digits 68, ×10
Questions
- How do I print them double-sided?
- Double-sided, flip on the long edge. Every front sheet is followed by its own already-mirrored back sheet, so print them in the order they come and every answer lands on its own card.
- Can I edit the cards?
- Yes, and that is half the point. Once you own the deck, the "Buy & edit" button here opens all 27 cards in the free flash card maker on this site — reword a definition, delete the ones you do not teach, add your own, and print at anything from two to nine cards a page, rather than the fixed eight of the PDF.
- Can I print a set for every student?
- Yes. Personal and classroom licence: unlimited printing, every class you teach, every year you teach it. It does not cover reselling the file or passing it on to a colleague.
- What if I find a card that is wrong?
- Tell us and we fix it, and we publish what changed. We have withdrawn a whole deck from sale for being out of date rather than quietly patch it.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The file downloads straight away — no account, no email, no card details.