As shown in following figure, a typical garden-variety red LED device will exhibit a drop of about 1.7 volts across its terminals. Note that this is not the same as the voltage drop across a resistor, but rather a characteristic of the solid-state “junction” that is the heart of the device. If the LED has a nominal rating of 10 milliamps (mA, or 0.01 amps) and we have a 5 V power supply, what size of resistor should we use to get 10 mA through the LED?