Experiment 3: Your first circuit

The Pregame

So this chapter gets you acquainted with resistors.  Resistance is defined by how much voltage in volts it takes to attain a 1 amp current flow through a circuit.  The unit of measurement in a resistor is in ohms.  (Simplified it can be considered how easily electrons can flow through a material)

For example: If it takes 400 volts to attain a 1 amp current flow in a circuit the resistance will be 400 ohms(written as 400Ω).  You can verify this by using ohm's law. V=I/R
R=VIR=(400 volts)(1 amp)R=400Ω
This is also why materials fall under two categories, conductors and insulators.  Conductors allow electrons to flow through them easily, thus they have a low resistance.  Insulators do not have many free electrons in them to allow for much movement, thus they have a high resistance.

Now take note the small rainbows of color on the resistors.  For the first and second stripe each band color represents a different number.  The third stripe represents the amount of zeros the amount has.  The possible silver/gold stripe at the end indicates the tolerance, or how accurate the resistor is within a certain percent.  

	1st/2nd Stripe	3rd Stripe
Black	0
Brown	1	0
Red	2	00
Orange	3	000
Yellow	4	0000
Green	5	00000
Blue	6	000000
Violet	7	0000000
Grey	8	000000000
White	9	__0000000000

Tolerance

Silver 5%

Gold 10%

Now shut up and make your circuit

Get a 6V battery carrier and attach the red wire (representing positive) to the LONGER end of the LED.  Attach the black(or blue) wire (representing negative) to one side of the resistor (it doesn't matter which side of the resistor) and the other end to of the resistor the shorter end of the LED.  Put the batteries in the battery carrier, sit and stare at your light.

RESULTS: One LED light lit.  

After Experiment Duties: Show your friends and brag to them on how much a hipster nerd you are.  Stare at your light for a solid 10 seconds and soak in the light of winning.  

References: Since I am a noob at this I have to thank this site ----> http://www.explainthatstuff.com/resistors.html for helping me out.

Experiment 2: Let's Abuse a Battery

In this experiment I had to intentionally short circuit a battery, not this most productive thing to do with your life BUT it's for science.  SO connect the 1.5 V AA battery to the battery carrier and alligator clip the cords together and give it some time to bake.

RESULTS: Semi burned finger, hot baked battery, and a sweet satisfaction at having the power of destruction at your fingertips.

Next set up the same way BUT connect the wires coming out of the carrier to each end of a 3amp fuse.  Put a fresh battery in the carrier and let bake for a minute.

RESULTS:  The battery should come out unharmed while your fuse on the other hand should be broken.  If you look closely you can actually see the broken wire in the fuse.  My camera didn't accurately capture the broken nature of the fuse.

Pre-Baked

 Post-Baked

Experiment 1: Taste the Power

This requires you to physically put the probs of you multimeter on your tongue (a little intimidating I know!).  You don't get electricuted, the only minor inconvience this will cause you is the explaination you must make when someone finds you sticking multimeter probs to your tongue.  Also make sure the multimeter is switched to 200K (or anything higher than 100K).

RESULTS FOR ME: 49 K

My tounge has a 49K ohm resistance, cool.

The next step...wetting my arm, didn't work for me.  Or, at least nothing constant (maybe you other imfs out there know how this works?).  At one point it produced 45 K ohm before quickly turning back to 0.

Other tests:

Tea: 196 K ohm
Spoon: 10 K ohm (although the multimeter has a hard time with this one)
Ceramic Cup: 0 K ohm
$1 Sacagawea Coin: 34(?) K ohm (another item the multimeter cannot measure properly)

Simple test but definitely got me friendly with my multimeter.

PART 1 SHOPPING

The book lists a butt ton of things you need to get thus I had to go on a shopping quest before the experimentation even began.  I bought most of my stuff from mouser.com and Radioshack (try to avoid Radioshack it's expensive!).  For more info on where to buy your parts heres a link: Click me for electronic suppliers!

 It'll take about a week to get your parts depending on you live so you'll have to hold your excitement until then.