CHAPTER 2

ELECTRONICS PRIMER
IN THIS CHAPTER, WE WILL LEARN THE FOLLOWING CONCEPTS:

• Electricity, Conductivity, and Basic Terms

• Schematics, Circuit Blueprints, and Wiring Diagrams
• Prototyping Circuits
• Discrete Components vs. Breakout Boards
• Analog vs. Digital
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

What is Electricity?

• To understand electricity, you first need to understand the

structure of an atom.
• Atoms are the building blocks of everything around you. An
atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The
electrons have a negative charge, and the protons have a
positive charge. A typical atom has the same number of
electrons as protons and therefore is neutral in charge.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

What is Electricity?
• Electricity is a form of energy that involves the movement or storage of
charges; it is the phenomenon that occurs when we push or force charges
to move in a prescribed manner or a defined path.
• If you’ve ever seen a lightning storm, you’ve seen evidence of the
transfer of charges between the clouds and the ground.
• Charges are transferred through the air molecules of our
atmosphere, lighting up the sky as they move. The movement and
transfer of charges is called current.
• Current is measured in units called amperes (A) or milliamperes
(mA).
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

What is Electricity?
• Charges move when there is an electrical force that acts on them and a
path for the charges to move along. That electrical force is created by an
electrical potential difference, or what we commonly call voltage.
• Voltage is what ultimately causes charges to move, and it’s measured in volts
(V).
• For a reference, typical batteries range in voltage from about 1.5 V to 12 V.
A 12 V battery will cause charges to move faster than a 1.5 V battery.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS
Types of Electricity?
• Alternating Current (AC)
• An electric current that changes its direction very frequently at regular intervals
• AC is the kind of electricity in the power lines outside your house and in your wall outlets.
• AC electricity is great for power generation (for example, power plants), transmitting power
over long distances (like from the power plant to your home), and driving large devices (like
motors and heaters). We don’t use AC electricity for most of our household electronics,
however.
• Direct Current (AC)
• An electric current that is flowing in one direction only.
• Most small appliances and household electronics that plug into the wall outlet require DC
electricity and use a transformer to convert from AC to DC. Further details on AC and DC
are beyond the scope of this book, but the projects you build here will focus on DC
electricity.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

What is a Circuit?
• Even with the electrical forces pushing them, charges need a path to follow
from a point of higher potential to a point of lower potential.
• The path by which charges move from the positive (+) side of a battery
(high potential) to the negative (–) side of the battery (low potential) is
called a circuit.
• A circuit consists of a closed path from the positive terminal to the negative
terminal through a device such as a light-emitting diode (LED), resistor, light, or
motor.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

What is a Circuit?
• Figure 1 shows a simple circuit containing an LED, a battery, and a resistor.
Notice that the shape of the circuit loosely resembles a loop or a circle, hence
the name circuit.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

What is a Circuit?
• In order for charges to move, the path must be made out of a material that is
conductive.
• Conductivity is not an absolute measure but more of a continuum. While some
materials are generally considered conductors and nonconductors, most materials
occupy a range of values for conductivity. In other words, some materials allow
charges to move more freely than others.
• Think of driving a car on different surfaces. On the smoothly paved interstate, you
can go much faster than if you were off-roading or driving down dirt roads.
Different roads allow for different speeds the same way that different materials
allow for more or less conductivity.
• We use the term resistance to describe how much a material slows down the
movement of charges.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

Ohm’s Law
• As you may already have guessed, there is a relationship between current,
voltage, and resistance. This relationship is commonly called Ohm’s Law, and
it is represented mathematically as follows:
V=I×R
• In this equation, V represents the voltage, I represents the current, and R is
the resistance. (Don’t let this bit of math scare you: this is one of only about
three equations you’ll see in this book.)
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

Visualizing Electricity as Water in a Pipe

• To understand what’s going on in a circuit, it’s useful to think of electricity like
water moving through pipes. Imagine water flowing through a garden hose. When
you turn on the valve, water starts to flow through the hose to the other end, as
shown in Figure 2.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

Visualizing Electricity as Water in a Pipe

• The water molecules moving in the hose
represent the flow of charges (current).
If we turn the water valve up or down,
we can change the water pressure in
the hose. The water pressure in the hose
is similar to the voltage in a circuit. If you increase the water pressure, the
flow also increases. This is the same with circuits: if you increase the voltage,
the current also increases. The final part of the analogy is in the hose itself.
If we put a kink in the hose or restrict its diameter, we create resistance. The
increase in resistance slows down the flow (lowers the current).
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS

Visualizing Electricity as Water in a Pipe

• In terms of circuits, we use devices that change electricity into other forms of
useful energy, such as illuminating a light, rotating a motor, or sounding a
buzzer.
• A device that converts electrical energy to other forms of energy is called a
load.
• Thomas Edison discovered that he could convert electrical energy into light
energy with the light bulb; you will do that and a whole lot more throughout
this course.
SCHEMATICS, CIRCUIT BLUEPRINTS, AND WIRING DIAGRAMS

• While pictures are nice, it’s not efficient to meticulously draw out every
component to show how a circuit is wired up. Throughout the projects, you
will see schematics like the one in Figure 3 as well as illustrations to help you
with your circuits.
SCHEMATICS, CIRCUIT BLUEPRINTS, AND WIRING DIAGRAMS

• Schematics are simplified drawings of circuits. We sometimes also call

these wiring diagrams or circuit blueprints.
• A schematic shows what is connected to what and which components to use in
building the circuit. We will use the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers) US standard for drawing circuits in this book.
• The schematic in Figure 3 actually represents the same circuit as the illustration in
Figure 1.
• The straight lines represent wires, and each component has its own unique symbol.
• Figure 4 shows some common schematic symbols you’ll see in this book.
SCHEMATICS, CIRCUIT BLUEPRINTS, AND WIRING DIAGRAMS

• The IEEE schematic symbol format

is internationally recognized and
used to communicate and share
circuit drawings across the world.
It’s intended to quickly represent
components using very simple lines and drawings.
PROTOTYPING CIRCUITS
• As you work through the projects in this
course, you will build and test a
variety of designs. As you build a
circuit, you may also want to
rearrange parts, swap things around,
or add new components. This process is
called prototyping.
• You can prototype electronics in a way
that is similar to building with wooden
blocks or LEGO bricks by using a
solderless breadboard like the one
shown in Figure 5.
PROTOTYPING CIRCUITS
• A solderless breadboard is a
plastic rectangle with a lot of holes
in it. These holes are spaced on a
0.100-inch grid and sized so that
the majority of electronic
components fit snugly in them.
• Underneath the holes are small clips
made out of a soft conductive
metal, as shown in Figure 6.
PROTOTYPING CIRCUITS
• Wires that are plugged into holes on the same row are connected together
electrically by these metal clips. It’s like twisting the wires together without
the twisting part.
• Notice that the clips only span the width of five holes. There is a center
“ditch” that divides the two halves of the breadboard, and the clips on the
right side are not connected to the clips on the left side.
• NOTE
• Hold the breadboard so that it is tall and skinny (portrait orientation) and the letters
at the top are right side up. We’ll refer to the horizontal groupings of five holes as
rows and the vertical sections on the sides of the breadboard as columns, assuming
this orientation.
PROTOTYPING CIRCUITS
• Breadboards come in a number of
shapes and sizes, but most will still have
vertical columns on the outer edges of
the board.
• These columns are called power rails
or power buses, and each has a
single continuous clip that is
connected from top to bottom, as in
Figure 7.
• Breadboards also often have + and –
labels to indicate where to plug in your
power connection, with matching red
and blue color coding.
PROTOTYPING CIRCUITS
• You can see a solderless breadboard
in action in Figure 8, which shows a
prototype design of a circuit with eight
LEDs.
DISCRETE COMPONENTS VS. BREAKOUT BOARDS
• We mentioned components earlier and want to touch on them briefly here. There
are hundreds, if not thousands, of different electrical components in the world.
• When we say components, we are talking about discrete components —the most
rudimentary parts you can buy. For example, the resistor, capacitor, and LED in
Figure 9 are discrete components.
DISCRETE COMPONENTS VS. BREAKOUT BOARDS
• On the other hand, a breakout board is an assembly of components prewired
together onto a single board made to be breadboard friendly.
• Breakout boards help speed up the prototyping process. You can see a good
example of one in Figure 10.
DISCRETE COMPONENTS VS. BREAKOUT BOARDS
• Figure 10 compares a complex component—an integrated accelerometer
sensor package (P/N ADXL345 from Analog Devices)—and the breakout
board SparkFun produces for it.
• The chip measures a mere 5 × 3 mm! It has tiny metal connection pins that
serve a similar purpose to the long metal legs you see on discrete
components. They’re just so small that connecting wires directly to them is
nearly impossible.
DISCRETE COMPONENTS VS. BREAKOUT BOARDS
• Breakout boards route these small
connection points to plated-through holes
on the edge of the board, spaced exactly
0.100 inch apart so that the holes on the
board line up with the holes on a
solderless breadboard.
• Each hole is metal plated so that you can
solder wires directly to it. Or, if you want
to use it with a breadboard, you can also
solder on male headers as shown in
Figure 11
ANALOG VS. DIGITAL
• With the concepts of circuits, components, voltage, current, and resistance defined,
we can now talk about two different approaches to electronics: analog and
digital. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, and you can’t really
understand the circuits you build without understanding both concepts.
• Analog deals with values that vary within a set range. Think of the dimmer switch
in some dining rooms; that is analog. Analog values can be on, off, and anything
in between. Digital values, on the other hand, have only two states: on or off.
• Digital electronics tend to include a microcontroller or microprocessor that is
programmed to turn things on and off in response to conditions, whereas analog
circuits tend to use components to vary the current, voltage, and resistance of a
circuit to achieve the same result.
•