Equal-Resistor Divider: 12V Halved to 6V
Compute the unloaded and loaded output of a two-resistor divider, plus the current and the power in each resistor.
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About this tool
This page opens the voltage divider calculator with a 12V input and two equal 10kΩ resistors (R1 and R2) already filled in — the output voltage, current and power below are computed live on load.
This is the reference case every divider explanation starts with: when R1 equals R2, the ratio R2 / (R1 + R2) is always exactly 0.5, no matter what the equal value is — 10kΩ here is just a convenient standard resistor value that keeps the current sensibly low (12V / 20kΩ = 0.6mA). The output is 12V ÷ 2 = 6V, and it stays exactly half regardless of whether you use 1kΩ pairs, 10kΩ pairs, or 100kΩ pairs.
Because the ratio only depends on R1 : R2 and never on their absolute size, this is also the fastest way to sanity-check the tool itself — halving is easy to verify by hand, so it is a good first stop before trusting the calculator with an asymmetric ratio for your real circuit.
Example. The defaults, 5 V with R1 and R2 at 10 kΩ and no load, report an ideal output of 2.5 V, a loaded output of 2.5 V, current 250 µA, and 625 µW in each resistor. A 10 kΩ load drops the loaded output to 1.6666666666667 V.
Limit. Vin, R1, and R2 must be positive. A non-positive load is ignored. Tolerance, source impedance, and AC impedance are not in the formula.