Pushbutton
The electrical wind waits for the button to be pushed and the metal bridge to connect both metal sides. Then the electricity tears through to the...
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LED
The + side of our battery rushes up into the longer leg and pushes around a tiny wire connected to the - side. The wire can't handle all this pressure so it gets hot and glows bright. The electricity continues toward the...
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Battery
Two halves of chemical energy that spiral violently toward each other in order to neutralize themselves when a wire creates a bridged connection between the two. We can use this electrical whirlwind by connecting other electrically conductive things along the path from + to -. We can make it travel around a metal wire starting with a...
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Resistor
The resistor is like a stuffed hose or a bottle neck that slows the electrical wind to protect the...
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Motor
The electrical vortex travels into the loops of wire wrapped inside that interact with magnets to cause the pole sticking out of the motor to spin. The electricity exits out of the motor through the other tab continuing toward the...
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Diode
When we cut off the flow of electricity to the motor it can cause it to flow backward which can damage several parts in our circuit. The diode is a one way street with a gate that stops the electricity from doing this. The - end has a line around it and connects to the motor side.
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Microcontroller
This is a tiny computer that has our program code inside that we type up on a regular computer and send to the chip over a usb cable. We can do a lot of things with this chip and all it does is send out electricity or listen for electricity coming in on each pin. We make these choices in our code. Our code is ready to send out pulses on the pin connected to the...
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Potentiometer
The electrical pulses come in on one outside leg through the center of the component which has resistor material that slides across the conductive metal connected to the other outer leg. The flow of electricity is adjusted by twisting the top most cylinder and the adjusted flow comes out the middle leg which connects to our...
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Piezo Speaker
The current flows in through the + leg. Each pulse from the microcontroller causes the metal plate inside to bend, creating ripples in the air resulting in buzzing or beeping sounds. The amount allowed to pass through the potentiometer decides the volume. To controller the bass of each buzz and beep we connect a...
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Capacitor
These are buckets that fill up with electricity then discharge their contents all at once. The side with a stripe and arrows connects to the - side of the...
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Get this Electronic Circuit Kit
Every component.
Every circuit line.
All ready to experiment with in one box.
Plug and play!