Re: seris or parrellell
southernboy
The cable (romex) is pulled as in a series circuit, from one outlet to another. The receptacles are actually wired in parallel. You see, in a series circuit the amps will flow through all the loads in the circuit at the same time and will be the same amps in all the loads too.
In a house, if you plug a load into a receptacle, only that receptacle will carry a this load. None of the other receptacles carry that load. The hot and the neutral are present at each receptacle independent of loads on other receptacles.
What may be confusing is that you connect the wires at the 1st receptacle that feed the 2nd that feed the 3rd (and so on). Putting both sets of wires on the receptacle is just a time and material savings over wire nutting the hots together and pig tailing to the receptacle (same for the neutral).
Now a switch is wired in series with the light. The neutral feeds past the switch, and the light will not get power unless the switch allows it to flow to the light.
Good luck,
HWS