🔍 Key Concepts

• Look closely at how each battery terminal is connected: positive-to-negative connections create series strings, while positive-to-positive / negative-to-negative connections create parallel groups. • In a series connection, individual battery voltages add, but the ampere-hour capacity stays the same as one battery. • In a parallel connection, the voltage stays the same as one battery, but the ampere-hour capacity adds.

💭 Think About

• Trace the path from the leftmost external negative terminal to the rightmost external positive terminal. Through how many 12‑volt batteries in a row does that path pass (count the series connections)? • Group the batteries: are there any pairs that share both positives tied together and negatives tied together, or is each positive tied to a negative of the next battery? What does that tell you about series vs. parallel portions of the bank? • Once you’ve decided if the four batteries act effectively like one long series string or one wide parallel bank, how would that affect the total voltage and total ampere‑hour capacity?

✅ Before You Answer

• Identify the two external terminals (where the arrows are) and be sure you know which batteries lie in that main path. • Count the number of series links (positive to negative) that the main path passes through – that directly tells you the total voltage (multiples of 12 V). • Decide whether the configuration causes the ampere-hour rating to stay at 100 Ah or to add up for more capacity; do not change both voltage and capacity in the same way.