Electronic Components
- lukepat74
- 22 lut 2017
- 4 minut(y) czytania
Before starting, we would like to expain three things.
Note that You will find explainations about the components here, but not circuits. See the "Electronics " post or visit a sub-website called "Electr. Circuits ( under development )" to get circuits.
Firstly, we would like to tell you the difference between two similar, but different things: electric circuits and electronic circuits.
Electric circuits are circuits, where the electricity is not modified in any way, but flows directly to the "targets" such as light bulbs or buzzers.
Electronic circuits are circuits with a modified flow of electricity using logic gates, resistors, or transmitters.
The second thing we want to explain are the two different types of electric currents: the direct current and alternating current.
The AC (alternating current) is a way of sending electricity. The electricity changes the directions of moving to lose as little electricity as possible during transport. It is used mainly in plugs.
The DC (direct current) is used mainly in batteries and does not change the direction of flow.
The third thing is the three main measurments connected to electricity: the voltage (V,volts), amperage (A,ampers) and resistance (Ohms).
The volts measure the difference of the amounts of electrones on various poles.
The ampers measure the amount of electricity flowing.
The ohms measure the resistance of a cable, resistor, ect...
Okay. Now that we have that out of the way, lets go to the basic components:
These are cables. They connect circuits together, and are extremely cheap;
they consist only of a conductor (a metal) and an isolator.
This is a light bulb. It heats up a metal inside to a great temeperature, but the metal does not burn, as it is placed in vacuum, and fire needs air to appear.
Firstly-what is a diode? a diode is a sort of cable that conducts electricity only one way. The picture on the left shows a LED (light-emmiting-diode). It's a diode, combined with a light, which very rarely burn up and require little electricity.
The picture on the left shows a battery. It creates electricity using chemical reactions. It creates a direct current and the electricity ALWAYS flows from the minus to the plus. As we have warned in the Arduino, do NOT connect the plus and minus the other way around, or the components may explode, get badly damaged, get set on fire...BEWARE!
Capacitors (the picture down) are small
electronic elements that can store
a bit electricity for a short amount of time. When they load, they let less and less any electricity pass through, until they're fully loaded when they don't let any electricity pass through. They can be unloaded by connecting to different poles than before or by unplugging them and holding the ends with your hand.
Left: ceramic capacitors have got significantly smaller capacity, but
there's no "+" and "-" poles - You don't have to worry how to connect them. Right: Electrolytic capacitors have got a bigger capacity, but they - just like diodes - do have the two poles. Their capacity is measured in Fahrads(F), but most capacitors' capacity is less than 1F and measured in microfahrads (uF) that are 1/1000000 F, but 1000uF is still very much. Electrolytic capacitors have got a capacity from 1uF to a few or more Fahreds, but most of them have got not more than 5000uF. However, the ceramic ones have got from 10pF to 1uF.
WARNING: Electrolytic capacitors can explode after connecting to the wrong poles!!! See the video below.
A resistor is an extremely useful component, as it allows to manipulate with the voltage and amperage by increasing the resistance. The stripes symbolise the resistance (you can check on a resistor stripe calculator online what resistance it has). Resistors divide into fixed resistors and variable resistors. Fixed resistors have one certain constant value of resistance. On the other hand, the variable resistors' resistance can be modified through a knob.
Variable resistors:
Motors are a necessary part of robots as they allow them to move. It seems simple, but You will soon realise that they have got many interesting properties.
Obviously, there are thousands of different motor types, but all of them run on DC and their main units are rotations per minute (RPM) and required voltage.
The direction the motor's axis moves depends on the way You connect them. If you connect a motor to the circuit one way, it will rotete e.x left, but if You reverse the cables, it will rotate the other way around.
A Motor's main parts are two magnets heading different poles situated on the two sides of the motor. The middle part ( picture ) is a rotor - a metal axis with an enormous amount of copper wound on it. When electricity gets through it, the rotor produces magnetic field that is either the same pole as one of the magnets or opposite. That's why the rotor gets repelled from one of the magnets or attracted towards them, but as it's locked, it begins to spin.
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