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SonaLabs Electronics 101 Chapter 02 Circuit Basics

The document discusses the basics of electric circuits including what a circuit is, how voltage works, and different types of circuits like short circuits and open circuits. A circuit requires a complete loop for electricity to flow from a power source through components and back. Short circuits allow too much current and can damage components while open circuits prevent any current from flowing.

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Cristiane Toledo
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82 views5 pages

SonaLabs Electronics 101 Chapter 02 Circuit Basics

The document discusses the basics of electric circuits including what a circuit is, how voltage works, and different types of circuits like short circuits and open circuits. A circuit requires a complete loop for electricity to flow from a power source through components and back. Short circuits allow too much current and can damage components while open circuits prevent any current from flowing.

Uploaded by

Cristiane Toledo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CHAPTER - 02

ELECTRONICS 101 - CIRCUIT BASICS

Created by Tum Kurtzman


What is a Circuit?
One of the first thing one will encounter when learning electronics is the concept of
a circuit. In this tutorial, we are going to discuss the basics of an electric circuit in
further details.
Consider the circuit below:

The circular path which is always required to get electricity to flow and do something
useful is called a circuit. It starts and stops at the same place.
Voltage and how it works:
A battery has a specific number of volts and so does a wall outlet at our homes.
Voltage is basically the measurement of the electrical potential produced by the
battery or the utility grid connected to the wall outlet. The volts in the battery or wall
outlet won’t actually do anything until you use them to power a device.
What we’ve learnt so far:
 For any circuit, we know the following:
 Voltage is potential, a voltage difference is required in order to get electricity
to flow and do anything useful.
 Electricity needs a path to flow through, which must be an electrical conductor
such as a copper wire.
 Electricity will flow from a higher voltage to a lower voltage
© SonaLabs Electronics https://www.sonalabs.org
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 DC voltage sources like batteries always have two sides i.e. positive and
negative with the positive side having a higher voltage and the negative side
having a lower voltage.

Short & Open Circuits


The main reason as to why we build circuits, is to make electricity do useful things
for us, and the way we do that is by introducing different things in our circuits that
use the current flow to light up, spin motors, run and power appliances, etc.
The things that we introduce in our circuits are called “loads” because they “load
down” the power supply. If we load down a power supply too much, this slows down
the current flow which can damage the electronic components or even the power
supply.
Let’s learn about two special cases of circuits i.e. short circuit & open circuit and by
knowing about these will help us tremendously when it comes to troubleshooting the
circuits we build.
Short Circuit:
If we connect a wire directly from the positive to the negative side of a power supply,
we create a short circuit and this is a very bad idea.
Consider the illustration below:

© SonaLabs Electronics https://www.sonalabs.org


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Why is this a bad idea?
Earlier, we learnt that electricity (electrical current) flows from a higher voltage to a
lower voltage and if we introduce a load into the circuit, we can be able to do
something useful like light up a LED.
With a load in the circuit, current flowing through the circuit is limited as compared
to that which your device consumes, however, without any restrictor in the circuit,
there won’t be anything to slow down the current and it will try to be infinite. In
such cases, the power supply will provide as much current as it can which may be
too much and this could burn the wires, damage the power supply or even drain the
battery.
In most cases a safety mechanism is built into the power supply to limit maximum
current in the event of a short circuit, but this is not always the case. This is why, we
all have circuit breakers in our homes and office buildings to prevent fires from
starting in the event of a short circuit somewhere in the wirings.
The other related problem to a short circuit is when we unintentionally let too much
current to flow through part of our circuits which causes a part to burn out. This may
not be a short circuit but its close and it most often happens when we use the incorrect
resistor value which lets too much current to flow through another component such
as an LED as illustrated below:

© SonaLabs Electronics https://www.sonalabs.org


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NB: The bottom line here is that, if you notice that things are of all a sudden
becoming hot or a part of the circuit blows up, turn off the power source immediately
and look for possible short circuits.
Open Circuits:
This is basically the opposite of the short circuit and it’s a circuit where the loop
isn’t fully connected and therefore it isn’t really a circuit at all.
Consider the illustration below:

In this circuit, unlike the short circuit we saw earlier, nothing will burn out but also
the circuit won’t work either. This is most likely caused by an open circuit which is
usually due to a broken connection or a loose wire.
In case you are new to circuits and you are having trouble locating an open or short
circuit, a multimeter can be a very useful tool for troubleshooting. If you set it to
measure volts, you can use it to measure or check the voltage at different points in
your circuit and eventually find the point where voltage isn’t getting through.
Conclusion:
We’ve just covered the basic form of a circuit and as we keep going with these
tutorials, we’ll encounter more complex circuits with multiple loops and many more
electronic components. One thing you should note though, is that no matter how
complex a circuit is, it will always follow the same rules as the basic one-loop circuit
that we’ve just covered in this tutorial. In the next tutorial, we’re going to cover the
difference between Alternating Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC).
© SonaLabs Electronics https://www.sonalabs.org
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