The ordering of the components, and how they are connected, is important in a circuit. For example, two components (here resistors) can be arranged in two different ways, as shown in Figure 11. A circuit in which the current must take a single path, going through first one component and then the other in series, is shown in Figure 11(a); a circuit in which the current splits and takes two parallel paths at the same time is shown in Figure 11(b).