Electronics 101

Our students today got their hands on a breadboard and some real electronic components.

A breadboard is a platform on which one can connect circuit board pieces together without having to use a soldering iron; it is used by hobbyists and developers to prototype electronic circuits. Last week we went over the how transistors work and can be used to make logic gates, and today we turned that theory into practice!

The students were quick to grasp the fundamental of the breadboard’s internal architecture, how the power supply is to be connected safely, and how to avoid short circuits. By using buttons, resistors, LEDs, and transistors the students constructed interactive AND, OR, and NOR gates. Now that our students have made their own gates, we’ll be able use Integrated Circuit (IC) chips of those gates in our next class to build more complex electronic devices