Simple Circuit on A Breadboard

Activity 2

Purpose

The purpose of this lesson is to gain a basic understanding of the breadboard and its components. By the end of this lesson, students should feel comfortable working with a breadboard, as well as have a basic understanding of the parts of a breadboard. Throughout the lesson, students will practice the computational thinking skill of abstraction. Abstraction occurs when students are able to see the similarities between things at a higher level.

Materials

For each participant:

1 resistor (10K Ohm)
1 LED
1 battery 9V
2 wires
1 breadboard
1 9V battery snap

Materials for optional activity

This paper breadboard printout
Markers/pens/colored pencils (at least 3 different colors)
sticky notes (various colors)

Vocabulary

breadboard
power rails
terminal strips
center divider
battery
LED

Step 1: Identity Activity

Where the Wind Blows

Everyone sits in a circle on chairs and one person is in the middle.
The person in the middle yells out "the wind blows towards people who _________". Everyone who matches up with what they said has to get up and swap seats with someone else (who isn't sitting next to them). While this is happening, the person in the middle would also try to steal a seat. Inevitably someone will be left in the middle and process continues.

Some examples of what the person in the middle could say are:

The wind blows towards people who ate cocopops for breakfast today.
The wind blows towards people who have been overseas.
The wind blows towards people who play basketball.
The wind blows towards people who have a name that starts with B.
The wind blows towards people who like eating chips.

This activity is adapted from this site.

Step 2: Background On a breadboard

Why is it named breadboard?

Before electronics breadboards were created, people would use actual wooden breadboards, nails, and wires to create their circuits

Why would you want to use one?

Its solderless! It’s great for making temporary circuits, which means its great for prototyping. Prototyping is creating a physical model to test out an idea or project.

Parts of a breadboard

While explaining this part, try to have students follow along with their physical breadboards.

Power Rails

mostly used to connect the power supply to the breadboard. Positive rails indicated by + sign and are red. Negative rails indicated by - sign and are blue. Power rails are connected to each other vertically.

Terminal Strips

The main areas to hold most of the electronic parts. Terminal strips are connected horizontally to each other. They are labeled along the side by numbers indicating the row, and along the top by letters indicating the column. The holes or notches are what you stick the electronic part into to connect it to the circuit.

Center Divider

Allows us to mount integrated circuit chips and other pieces onto the breadboard.

Video: Everything you need to Know about Breadboards

This video shows gives a deeper look into how the breadboard works, what the insides look like, and examples of how it is used in real life. There is also an accompanying article for you to refer to, which can be found here.

beginning to apply knowledge of the breadboard

Connecting the Dots

This activity is aimed to be a bridge between learning conceptually about the parts of the breadboard and beginning to see how to put it into practice. Using paper, markers, and, sticky notes, students will begin to make connections between how the breadboard works and their creation of the same simple circuit they did in lesson 1. This activity is optional in case the students don't pick up on the terminology/workings of the breadboard immediately or don't have background experience with electronics.

Materials needed: printout of breadboard, sticky notes, markers/colored pencils/crayons/other coloring material with at least 3 different colors per student, pen

Step 1: Color coding the breadboard

Once all the students have a copy of the breadboard, start this activity by having them highlight all of the holes that are connected to each other. With the printout, this means that each of the power rails (columns on the left and right sides) should be connected, as well as each row of the terminal strips. Once completed, it should look something like the image to the right. Two alternating colors are used here to make more visible the differences between rows/columns.
Explain that the places where the holes are connected by a color are where the electricity is going to flow through. This means that any component that is in the same connected part is connected.

Step 2: Coming up with the components

Using the sticky notes, students should create paper versions of the components needed to build their simple circuit (battery, resistor, LED, and some wires). This can be as creative or basic as the student wants or that time allows. The image to the right has an example of a basic design of the components (note the LED has an indication for the positive and negative sides).
In this case, using the sticky notes is to make the breadboards they create reusable. However, this is not strictly necessary and markers could be used to draw the components on the breadboard handout directly.

Step 3: Building a simple circuit

Once the paper breadboard has been color coded and the components are ready, have students go through the process of constructing how they think the simple circuit could be constructed on a breadboard.

The finished projects should look similarly (though not exactly the same) as the image to the right.

Creating a basic circuit on a breadboard

Disclaimer: It doesn’t matter which row or column things are placed, as long as wires, LED, and resistor are in a complete circuit. This means the wire could be placed in any row, as long as the end of the LED that corresponds to that wire is also attached in the same row. This ensures the circuit is complete and will run. If they are not placed in the same row, the circuit will be “broken” and electricity won’t flow. Essentially, if the circuit is correct it doesn’t matter if it is in row 2 or row 15.

Directions:

Attaching the Battery

Attach the battery snap to the top of the battery
Place the red wire of the battery snap into one of the red power rails
Place the black wire of the battery snap into one of the blue power rails (*it also might be a green power rail, but that is still fine)

Inserting the LED

Place the LED into the bread board, making sure that the two legs are not in the same row
Place one end of the resistor in the same row as the negative side of the LED (short leg). Place the other in a different, unused row.

Completing the Circuit

Take a wire and place one end of it in the positive power rail column (red). Place the other end in the same row as the positive leg of the LED (long leg).
Take another wire and place one end of it in the negative power rail column (blue/green). Place the other end in the row with only one leg of the resistor in it.

Once the last connection is made, the circuit should light up! If not, try going back and making sure all of the components are securely pushed into the breadboard, and that they are all connected to each other.

REflection

Do you think that these activities allowed you to be expressive of your personalities? How?
Do you think that the activities from today allowed you to work with other students? Why or why not?
Where do you think breadboards might be useful? Why?
Could you explain how a breadboard works to someone else? How would you?
Describe how you decided how to work together.

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