From my high school days:

Bob...............0
Brown.......... 1
Raped...........2
Our................3
Young...........4
Girls.............5
But...............6
Violet...........7
Goes...........8
Willingly.......9

The politically correct version.

Bad boys rush our your girls but Violet greets wisely.

 

I personally really dislike the color coding, but apparently some people can understand it and like it. Anyways, I just use a multimeter. If it's in a circuit, if possible, I remove it, measure it, and place it back in. But honestly they should just put values on it. Just my opinion.

Or

https://www.electronics2000.co.uk/

Assuming you can see the colors.

 

I actually know a few people who are color-blind. So just another reason to label them like caps.

 

Hello,

@-live wire- , Capacitors can also have color codes:
https://wiktel.com/standards/capa.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/How_To-Reading_Codes.html

Bertus

 

@Dwightbingham Has any of this cleared this up for you? Haven't heard from you since you posted this a few days ago. Just wanna know everything is OK for you on this subject.

 

I find that through hole resistors aren't the norm anymore (at least for production boards) I see mostly SMT. These are easier because there are no colors, just the code with last digit multiplier. Problem is they are so small that even with my young(ish) eyes I still bust out a magnifying glass every once in a while. The color code comes easily the more you use it. I still get confused with anything > Blue for some reason hahaha.

When I was in school in the early 2000's it was "Bad Booze Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well"

 

I personally really dislike the color coding, but apparently some people can understand it and like it.

I neither like it nor dislike it, but I'm perfectly comfortable using it; I first learned it as a kid, nearly 60 years ago, and since then it's become so automatic that I don't even think about the colors anymore. When I see a resistor with yellow, violet, red and gold bands my mind immediately says "4.7 kΩ, 5%" without any thought as to the colors.

Practice leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to comfort.

 

But honestly they should just put values on it.

It's a left over from the old days, the days before ink jet printing that can make small lettering fast. But if they printed the values on them then people would complain the printing is too small.

 

It is a fact that colour code was a good method to code the value of cylindric components...After it is a question of practice.... like words....you don't decode each letter of the the usuals word!
When I was young... almost all resistors was axial and up to now I decode E12 values (serie : 10,12,15,18,22......) without reading the bars. However for 1% values series ( (three bars + one for the decade) or also low values (decade in gold or silver) it is not so obvious for me...

Jean-Louis

 

I agree with Audioguru. I never had any problem with any Philips resistors which had tan, brown, light blue or dark green bodies, according to the series. But the distinction among brown, red and orange on many Asian resistors is poor and makes them hard to read.

I knew someone who would get out his little color wheel helper every time he had to read a resistor, which always rather baffled me. Like others have said, I could read 5% resistors with the briefest glance. One percenters I had to consider a little more carefully. Now I can't see the blasted things at all without a magnifier.

Be grateful for color codes. The trend in surface mount resistors, even those large enough to mark, is away from any sort of marking for low-cost types. Unmarked SM ceramic caps has long been the rule.

I do need a color chart to read the dots on rectangular silver mica capacitors. They are no longer fashionable.

 

Here is another thought. I am starting to have difficulty discerning between brown, red, and orange. My optometrist daughter says that it is possibly signs of cataracts developing.

 

I still have trouble distinguishing the brown-red-orange on Asian resistors and I have plastic eyeballs (actually just the lenses are plastic). Cataracts are like having yellowish-brownish filters, so they make the blue end of the spectrum dull.

 

Hello,

Even SMD codes can be a pain, as they can have a different coding:
http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/ResistorsMadeEasy/SMD-Resistors-EIA-Markings.html

Bertus

 

There are some resistors being sold on eBay with the particular selling point being that they are "old style" and have easily read colour bands!
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/680K-5-0...960720?hash=item4d70716250:g:4OgAAOSwEK9T4K~Z

 

Choose a mnemonic that suits you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_color_code_mnemonics

 

My father had been a Radar technician during ww11, and as I, at the age of around five, was taking old radios to bits and collecting the various components, he sat down with me, picked up a resistor and explained what it was and how to read the colour code.
He wrote out a chart with the colours and it's number value, and within one day I could read every resistor I had.
A few years later, a neighbour came round with a large box of assorted components with several hundred resistors all mixed up. I spent a few happy hours sorting them out and listing what I had.
From then on, even if I'm looking for a particular value amongst many mixed up resistors, in my mind I only see the colours and can blank from my vision those that are different and very quickly pick out the one I want. (I can do that with music, isolate just one instrument from the rest of what is going on.)
I don't know if that is an aquired art, or something that can be learned.

 

I don't know if that is an aquired art, or something that can be learned.

I understand what you are saying, but it seems like something that is "acquired" had to be learned. I'm interpreting what you said as being a natural talent versus a learned skill.

I suspect, like most things, it is a mixture of both and that mix varies from person to person.

 

I understand what you are saying, but it seems like something that is "acquired" had to be learned. I'm interpreting what you said as being a natural talent versus a learned skill.

I suspect, like most things, it is a mixture of both and that mix varies from person to person.

Yes, exactly