Resistors and Other Things

Resistors

How can you tell how much resistance your resistor has?

Every resistor has a few bands of color that indicate its resistance value. The resistors that we will be working with are three band resistors, meaning that they only have three colorful bands on one end and either a gold or silver band on the other. We won't focus much on the gold or silver band, as it won't matter much for the work we're doing.

Each color that appears on a resistor corresponds to a different color. The chart on the right displays each color with its corresponding number.

Each band on a resistor indicates a different value.

The first band is a digit. This means that whichever number the color corresponds to is the first digit in the resistance value. For example, the first color on the resistor above is brown, indicating that the first digit is 1.
The second band is a digit. Whichever number the color corresponds to will be the second digit in the resistance value. For example, the second color on the resistor above is black, indicating that the second digit is 0.
The third band is a multiplier. Whichever number the color corresponds to will be the power of ten that you will multiply the first two digits by. For example, the third color on the resistor above is orange. This indicates that you would multiply the first two digits (10) by 10 to the 3rd power (1,000). Thus, the resistor above is a 10,000 Ohm resistor.

Other Things

LED

This is an LED. The longer leg, the cathode, is the positive side. The shorter leg, the anode, is the negative side.

12V DC Motor

This is a 12V DC motor. This motor will rotate when it receives a current. We will use these in our robots.

Arduino

This is an Arduino Uno. We will use these to control our robots. You can program these small computers to output voltage when you want them to. They can also receive voltage signals from different sensors. We will talk more about these next class.

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