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I learned about the basic electronic components by going to the library and
reading books. PS! We hate spam as much as you and will never
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Resistors
Capacitors
LEDs
Transistors
Inductors
Integrated Circuits
Resistor
It didn’t seem to do anything! It was just there, consuming power. But with time,
I learned that the resistor is actually extremely useful.
You’ll see resistors everywhere. And as the name suggests, they resist the
current.
You use the resistor to control the voltages and the currents in your circuit.
How?
Much more that the LED can handle. So the LED will become very hot and burn
out after a short amount of time.
But – if you put a resistor in series with the LED, you can control how much
current is going through the LED.
Capacitor
It’s commonly used for removing noise, or making the supply voltage of a circuit
more stable.
Read more about the capacitor in this article: How Does A Capacitor Work?
There are many capacitor types. Most commonly, we divide them into polarized
and non-polarized capacitors.
A Light Emitting Diode – or LED for short – is a component that can give light.
For example to show that the circuit has power. But, you can also used them to
make cool light-show circuits.
In your laptop, on your mobile phone, on your camera, in your car +++
Transistor
If you put about 0.7 volts between the base and the emitter, you turn it on.
Note that this is true for NPN transistors. There are also other types, but worry
about these later.
But, instead of having just two states (ON or OFF), it can also be “a bit on” by
controlling the current that goes through its base.
A bit of current on the base produces a current of maybe 100 times more
(depending on the transistor) through the Collector and Emitter. We can use this
effect to build ampli ers.
Inductor
It’s just a coil of wire – and you can make one yourself by making some loops out
of a wire.
They are often used to make radio oscillators, more ef cient power supplies, and
lters.
It’s not that often that I used one actually, but in my article What is an inductor?
you can see how it works with some nice animations.
Integrated Circuit
It’s just an electronic circuit that has been shrunk to t inside a chip.
To gure out what a speci c IC does, you can read its datasheet.
What to do next?
Now, you know a bit about the basic electronic components.
But don’t just read about it – take action and start building electronics:
Ohmify is an online academy for electronics. Learn to build your ideas with
electronics, even if you have no experience from before. It includes a community
forum where you can ask questions about what you are learning or if you’re
stuck on your on project.
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