ELECTRONICS 1

LABORATORY EXPERIMENT #2 Exploring Light Emitting Diodes (LED) Date ___ - ___ - ___

Group ______ : ____________________________, ____________________________, ____________________________, ____________________________

Subject Instructor: Engr. Nemuel Norman Giron

Introduction

LEDs are probably the most-liked elements by all beginners maybe even by everyone involved in electronics projects.
One of the most important factor to use them properly is to connect them the way they should.

Light emitting diodes (LED) are diodes that emit light when they reach their turn-on voltage. An LED is a type of
polarized component. Polarized component means that it has to be connected in a specific way in order to work.
Connecting it the other way may damage it, it may even explode or your circuit will just not work properly. So polarity
is very important as you can see.

Preliminary: Checking the LED polarity

Leads length. For a brand new LED, the longer lead is its positive terminal. If you already used them in a project or
unsoldered them from an old device this wouldn't work. So you better take a closer look at your LED and identify the
flat side of it to determine its polarity.

Part 1
PROCEDURE:
1. Obtain an LED based on their color as shown from the table. And work on the red probe of DMM connected to
the positive lead of the LED and the black probe on the negative lead of the LED.
2. Put the DMM in the diode test mode and V and COM probes readings. Write the result on the table.

DMM setting: DMM setting:

No LED color Diode test Mode V and COM probes
Reading Resistance Reading
Red probe to Black probe to Red probe to Black probe to
positive lead negative lead positive lead negative lead
(forward biased) (reverse biased) (forward biased) (reverse biased)
1 Red
2 Yellow
3 Green
4 White
5 Blue
What conclusion can be drawn from the obtain results?

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Part 2.
PROCEDURE:

1. Connect the circuit as shown in Figure1.

LED1

V1
12V R1
100Ω

Figure 1
2. Increase the DC supply voltage from 0 to 5 V in the increments shown.
3. At each value of DC power supply voltage, use the DMM to measure both the diode voltage and the voltage across
the 100  resistor and later replace the resistance for 1k.
4. Fill in the table showing (1) the power supply voltage, (2) the diode voltage, (3) the voltage across the 100  resistor
and (4) the resistor current (= resistor voltage/R).
Note: If the diode doesn’t light when you get to 2 V, the diode may be bad or connected backwards, so correct that
and start over.

LED DC POWER SUPPLY, V

0 1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0
Diode Voltage, V result
Red
Yellow
Green
White
Blue

LED DC POWER SUPPLY, V

0 1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0
Resistor Voltage, V result
Red
Yellow
Green
White
Blue
 LED DC POWER SUPPLY, V
0 1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0
Current, A
Red
Yellow
Green
White
Blue

Conclude on the value of the turn on voltage for each LED you use.
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Part 2.
PROCEDURE:

Replace the 100 ohm resistor by 1k-ohm and repeat the whole process of part 2.
Conclude on the results by comparing all outputs.

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