01.17.16 | Blog Debrief: Breadboard Lab

Breadboard configuration.

The breadboard exercise and general electrical diagram information initially came off as being much more complicated than they really ended up being; I think it mainly has to do with the sheer amount of potential different symbols, graphics, etc. used in mapping out electrical circuits. Like last time, though, the actual physical work associated with the exercise ended up being way more palatable, but that may have more to do with the fact that I have an easier time learning this sort of stuff via practice, rather than written or visual aids.

I mainly relied on the cheat sheet to assemble the breadboard and thankfully got it properly running in just three or four tries; ultimately, I had everything properly wired and set up, I just had a wire or two off by a cell or "port" (not really sure what to call them). That being said, the cheat sheet served a way more practical purpose than just a means of effectively mapping the circuitry: Cole was sitting next to me at the time and did his nearly from scratch without much regard for the cheat sheet's layout, and in truth probably wound up with a more efficient setup than I did - but from what I saw it was still a bit of a struggle getting there, and the cheat sheet ultimately taught me more after having wired everything up than trying to go by the instructions did.

Side view.

Going off of the central chip's counterclockwise distribution or "progression" of power, I found myself explaining everything to Cole in a way that I wasn't even aware I knew, namely that all of the circuitry ran in parallel along its grid, e.g. a wire in cell A-15 would receive information from one of the chip's endings in cell C-15. In addition to having to "start" the positive and negative charges on either boundary of the breadboard, they had to likewise "connect" via parallel spacing to the first and last endings of the central chip. While I couldn't explicitly lay out what part or wire served what function in making the lighting alternate, I still had a pretty decent grasp on all of it. Regarding the use of additional capacitors:

4.7 microfarads at 50 volts was the "default," with the lights blinking at an average pace. Experimenting further:

At 47 microfarads and 16 volts, the lights blinked more slowly.

At 1 microfarad and 160 volts, the lights blinked much more quickly.

Applying power...

and getting light!

While I wasn't fully aware of it in class, it makes more sense now that I understand that farads are a "unit of capacity," so to speak - meaning a higher voltage pared with a lower capacity results in a faster speed of electrical transfer, and vice-versa.