September 7th, 2022


Lab: Electronics

This week, a lot of new terms was introduced. The most challenging part is understanding the relations between the terms and how the terms apply conceptually. I intend to continue referring back to the readings to help solidify my understanding of the terms with exposure.

Furthermore, I explored the shop more in depth on the floor and gathered materials for the labs. I was able to identify the necessary components among the sea of similar looking components by paying attention to the labels on the bins and referencing back to the lab reading with all the component descriptions.

I also worked with a multimeter for the first time, measuring continuity, resistance, and voltage on various things. It was a little tricky keeping in mind the notations on the multimeter but following the videos and pictures included in the readings helped.

Below is a clip of using a potentiometer to generate a changing voltage. I struggled getting the led to turn on despite checking the wiring multiple times. I realized the issue was the potentiometer knocking certain wire connections loose from the breadboard, disrupting the flow of electricity or voltage output to the LED. I adjusted for this issue by later moving the wires down a few columns but in the same row, where I learned that the blocks within a row are connected.

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Lab: Switches and Pushbuttons

In this lab, I primarily worked with switches and pushbuttons to power LEDs and a motor in a series of projects.

Project 1: Three Switches in Parallel

In this first project, I connected three switches to a breadboard in parallel, whereby pressing any of the buttons, the connected LED will turn on. At one point, two of the switches turned the LED on but the last switch did not. I systematically checked the breadboard to try and troubleshoot where the issue was. After checking that each wire was fully pushed into the breadboard, I found that one of the wires was misplaced by a column. After adjusting the single wire, each switch was able to turn the LED on.

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