Simple Circuits is an electronic product and circuit design company based in San Diego, California. Started in 2005, Simple Circuits supports our customers from. Powerpoint with bold images and animations showing how to build a very simple circuit and how it works etc. Used to facilitate inclusion in a lower ability Year 4 set but could be useful elsewhere.

A circuit is the path that an electric current travels on, and a simple circuit contains three components necessary to have a functioning electric circuit, namely, a source of voltage, a conductive path, and a resistor. Circuits are driven by flows. Flows are ubiquitous in nature, and are often the result of spatial differences in potential energy. Water flows downriver due to changes in height, tornadoes swirl due to gentle temperature gradients, and sucrose flows from the leaves of trees to their distal parts due to differences in water potential.

Even life itself is due to a clever hack by which living organisms serve as a conduit for the flow of solar energy. Perhaps then it is no surprise that electronic devices (certainly the one you're reading this on now) are driven by flows.

If this changes, and the height of the water in one lake is greater than the other, e. Crack Corel X5 Remove Protexis Licensing V2 on this page. g. (h_2 >h_1 ), then water will flow.

Now, the pressure on the trench from the water in the higher lake is greater than the corresponding pressure from the lower lake, and hence water should flow out of the higher lake, through the trench, and into the lower lake. If it were possible to keep the water level in the two lakes constant, for instance by replacing the water that leaves the high lake, and removing the water that enters the low lake, then there would be a steady flow of water through the trench. Long ago, people noticed that lightning, i.e. Charged matter, can move from one place to another en masse. The reason for this is that clouds build up a large asymmetry in charge (i.e.

Electrons accumulate at the bottom, and the top is left relatively positive) which leaves parts of the cloud highly charged in comparison to other parts of the cloud, nearby clouds, the ground, or even airplanes. This asymmetry creates a large difference in electric potential between the charged region of cloud and other objects.

In the case of cloud to ground lightning, the negatively charged bottom region of a cloud has a large electric potential relative to the Earth (which has a net charge approximately equal to zero), on the order of (10^8 ) volts. This is a situation abhorred by nature, and works to relax these gaps in electric potential by flowing charge to balance out the asymmetries. For any simple system, finding V, I, or R is straightforward when given the other two factors, but it gets more complicated when a power sources drives multiple devices in series. Series means several devices connected end to end, with the positive terminal of one device connected to the negative device of the next, just like a set of Christmas lights. Because the devices flow into one another, and charge is conserved, any current that flows into the first device must flow out from the last device, i.e. The current through every device is the same.

Devices in series is like water floating down a river: the river can twist, turn, contract, and expand, but the amount of water flowing by any given cross section per unit time must be the same at all points along the river, i.e. (v_1A_1=v_2A_2 ). If this were not so, water would build-up at points along the river and would overflow the banks. In parallel arrangements, each circuit element is connected to the terminals of the battery independent of the other circuit elements. Because their terminals are each held at the potentials of the battery terminals, the voltage across each device is equal to the voltage across the battery itself.

If one of the devices experiences a failure (i.e. The path for current breaks in a given device), the other devices continue to function unabated. Again, we wish to know what happens when a battery drives several devices in parallel, i.e. What is the effective resistance of connecting devices in parallel? Consider the diagram below, depicting a set of resistors in parallel, connected to a battery of voltage (V ). Calculate the resistance between points (V_+ ) and (V_- ) in the diagram above.

Studying the circuit diagram, we see that starting from point (V_+ ), the current encounters a single resistor (R_1 ) in series with a branch that has another resistor (R_1 ) in parallel with an infinite ladder. In principle, we can write down new equations every time the circuit makes a new branch, but that will lead to a rather large system of relations to solve.

It might be profitable to think about the remainder of the circuit as a black box device of some effective resistance. If we look at the circuit within the black (gray in the diagram below) box, we notice that it is an exact copy of the overall circuit. Of course, it is missing the first bit of circuit that falls outside the gray box, but this is of no consequence as the ladder is infinite. The difference is analogous to subtracting 1 from ( infty ), and there is no difference between ( infty ) and ( infty-1 ). In the series resistors discussion, the voltage across the battery was equal to the sum of the voltages across the other circuit elements.

Further, if an electron moves down a voltage drop (V ), the electron will pick up the kinetic energy (q_eV ). Similarly, to bring an electron up a gradient of voltage (V ), the electron will lose the energy (q_eV ). Assuming that electrons start from the battery at rest, the energy gained by dropping down the voltage of the battery must equal precisely the energy lost by traversing the resistors.

By If you are interested in understanding electronic circuits, one of the best ways to learn about electronics is to build a simple circuit. This simple circuit consists of just three components: a 9 V battery, a light-emitting diode (LED), and a resistor.

Not only will you learn something about building circuits, but you can also you this completed circuit to practice using your multimeter. Here is the schematic for this circuit: You can build this circuit on a solderless breadboard. You’ll need the following parts: • Small solderless breadboard • 470 Ω, 1/4 W resistor • Red LED, 5 mm • 9 V battery snap connector • 9 V battery • Short length of jumper wire (1″ or less) Here are the steps for building this circuit: • Connect the battery snap connector. Insert the red lead in the top bus strip and the black lead in the bottom bus strip. Any hole will do, but it makes sense to connect the battery at the very end of the breadboard. • Connect the resistor.

Insert one end of the resistor into any hole in the bottom bus strip. Then, pick a row in the nearby terminal strip and insert the other end into a hole in that terminal strip. • Connect the LED. Notice that the leads of the LED aren’t the same length; one lead is shorter than the other. Insert the short lead into a hole in the top bus strip, and then insert the longer lead into a hole in a nearby terminal strip. Insert the LED into the same row as the resistor.

Both the LED and the resistor are in row 26. • Use the short jumper wire to connect the terminal strips into which you inserted the LED and the resistor. The jumper wire will hop over the gap that runs down the middle of the breadboard.

• Connect the battery to the snap connector. The LED will light up. If it doesn’t, double-check your connections to make sure the circuit is assembled correctly. If it still doesn’t light up, try reversing the leads of the LED (you may have inserted it backwards). If that doesn’t work, try a different battery. Do not connect the LED directly to the battery without a resistor.

If you do, the LED will flash brightly, and then it will be dead forever.