10kΩ Rotary Potentiometer

The 10kΩ rotary potentiometer is a single-turn, panel-mount variable resistor built around a resistive track and a movable wiper. Turning the shaft sweeps the wiper across the track, so the resistance between the wiper and each end terminal changes smoothly. The two outer terminals sit at the ends of the 10kΩ track and the center terminal is the wiper. In this simulator the terminals are labeled VCC, Signal (Wiper), and GND to reflect a typical divider hookup, but electrically the two outer pins are interchangeable ends of the same track.

It uses a linear (Type B) taper, meaning resistance and the resulting output voltage change in direct proportion to shaft angle. That linear response is what makes it the standard choice for microcontroller analog input, since a given number of degrees of rotation always maps to the same change in the ADC reading. The shaft covers roughly 300 degrees of mechanical travel between its end stops.

Wired as a voltage divider with the ends across a supply, the wiper outputs a voltage that swings between the two rail voltages as you turn the knob. Fed into an analog-to-digital pin, this gives a low-cost, tactile way to set brightness, volume, speed, thresholds, or menu selections. The 10kΩ value is a good middle ground: high enough to draw negligible current from a 5V or 3.3V rail, low enough to present a source impedance most microcontroller ADCs can sample cleanly.