All Electronic Components Explained In a SINGLE VIDEO.

today we are going to talk about basic electronic components found in every modern electronic device and their functions we will look at their characteristics and explore their work principles then we're going to conduct a series of experiments illustrating their operation and application this is ramatino [Music] the most common and simple component is the resistor it's one and only function in an electrical circuit is to reduce current here we can observe two identical light bulbs powered by two identical batteries one bulb is wired directly to the battery while the other in series with a resistor as we can see the second bulb is dimmer the reason is because the resistor steals some of the battery's energy as a result the voltage on lamp number two is lower while the voltage on lamp number one equals 4 volts which is batteries voltage in electronics this phenomenon is called voltage drop so we can say that 0. 5 volts are dropped on the resistor by design a resistor is just a piece of metal a conductor as opposed to regular wires however a resistor resists the flow of current partly turning it into heat so the most important property of this component is its resistance the less metal a resistor contains the higher the resistance the higher the resistance the lower the current in the circuit and the higher the voltage drop across resistors terminals resistance is measured in ohms this unit is named after the German physicist Georg Simon ohm who in fact discovered the relationship between current strength voltage and resistance today known as Ohm's law the resistance is indicated on the body of the resistor by color code which allows anyone to read the value no matter the orientation of the part on the board the second very important property of a resistor is power rating as you can see from our experiment when connected in series with the resistor a light bulb's intensity is reduced but we all know that energy is neither created nor destroyed which means that part of battery's energy is dissipated on the resistor as heat at high current values heating can be quite significant so the resistor power rating is always chosen according to the load as a rule the higher the power rating the larger the dimensions of the resistor if you ignore the power rating requirements when building your circuit your resistor May simply burn out and fail there are fixed and variable resistors a variable resistor is a device whose electric resistance value can be adjusted variable resistors are basically used in two situations when one needs to adjust a value while fine-tuning a circuit or if it's necessary to change a parameter when utilizing the device a volume knob on your car radio or a guitar amplifier would be a typical example of a variable resistor one very important aspect must be understood the amount of voltage drop across a resistor depends not only on its value but also on a whole number of factors current strength in the circuit load Behavior power supply voltage Etc so the drop on a fixed resistor is not constant and may actually vary this means we cannot use this component to build a voltage stabilizer but we will talk about step down converters a bit later capacitor this is perhaps the second most common Electronic Component after the resistor the capacitor is used to store energy and can be charged using any DC source after charging the voltage on the capacitor will be equal to the voltage of the source if you connect a Charged capacitor to a load it will release the accumulated energy the amount of energy or rather charge per unit of voltage that a particular capacitor can store is called capacitance the higher the capacitance of our capacitor the longer it can power the load capacitance is measured in ferrets a unit named after the English physicist Michael Faraday one farad is very large capacitance so in electronics microfarads nanofarads and picofarads are commonly used for some reason a unit called Milli farad is typically not used When indicating capacitance you can however find it in measuring instruments a multimeter for example so when measuring capacitance do not confuse it with microfarads by design a capacitor consists of two conductive plates between them is an insulating layer also known as dielectric the dielectric has a certain maximum voltage that it can withstand when accepted an electrical breakdown occurs so the second most important property of the capacitor is the voltage rating along with capacitance it is always indicated on its body and in no case should it be exceeded in a way a capacitor is similar to a rechargeable battery but the essential difference is that a capacitor stores the electrical charge directly while a battery first converts electrical energy into chemical energy stores it and then when discharged performs the reverse conversion on the other hand capacitance of a typical capacitor is significantly lower than the capacity of a battery so capacitors as a rule are not used as power supplies at the same time they are simply indispensable as filtering devices and in most circuits they can be found connected in parallel with power supply such capacitors ensure stability minimize voltage transients and may temporarily take over the power of the circuit in case of short-term voltage drops in this situation a parameter called ESR is of water importance ESR stands for equivalent series resistance and is a value representing the loss of useful energy in a circuit ESR is a value that shows how fast a capacitor can deliver energy to a load and is measured in ohms the lower these are the higher the performance of the capacitor you cannot measure ASR with a multimeter you need to utilize a specialized device for this purpose for example the GM 328 Universal tester which I have made a separate video about you can find a link to it in the description foreign diode is the most basic type of semiconductor a diode just like a resistor or a capacitor has only two terminals its Chief feature as you might guess from the name is the ability to conduct electric current only in One Direction and turn into a dielectric if current direction is reversed the symbol for a diode in a circuit diagram is a triangle pointing toward a straight line perpendicular to the wire the orientation of the triangle indicates the direction in which current is permitted the electrode marked with a triangle is called a node and the one with the line cathode the current flows in from an outside circuit through a node and flows out through cathode thicker sold in a node are sometimes called negative and positive poles respectively since it is the polarity in which voltage must be applied to the diode so that it conducts electric current or as they say in electronics becomes forward biased of course this rule is also true for LEDs and it's actually quite easy to remember because the shape of the cathode coincides with the minus sign a similar technique is used for marking diodes the cathode is indicated by a white stripe on their body in a circuit diode is most often used to rectify alternating current AC and its almost indispensable as a rectifier for that purpose four diodes are usually connected in a bridge like this alternating current is fed here and direct current is taken from here the dial Bridge circuit was invented by polish electric technician Carol Pollock and patented in 1895. these days tired bridge is mostly manufactured as a dedicated module with four Terminals and as the bridge rectifier produces a pulsating DC voltage in real circuits you will always see a capacitor wired and parallel to the output of the bridge the purpose of the capacitor is to provide a smoother output voltage and prevent voltage spikes diodes strictly speaking is not a perfect conductor when forward biased because similar to the resistor it exhibits voltage drop however contrary to the resistor whose drop as was noted above depends on the number of factors the drop across the diode is basically fixed and is usually around 0.

6 to 0. 7 volts this particular feature can be used to build a simple step down circuit let's say you have an old mobile phone that needs to be powered from a USB power supply without using a battery the nominal voltage of a Lithium-Ion battery is approximately 3. 7 volts while the USB Supply outputs 5 volts if we take two diodes and connect them in series The Unknown of course must be connected to the positive rail that is the red USB wire we will get a voltage drop of about 1.

4 volts which is basically what we need and what's really important here is that provided that the USB Supply produces exactly 5 volts the voltage at the output of our circuit will also remain stable no matter what happens to the load of the phone so by wiring several diodes in series it's possible if necessary to come up with a larger fixed voltage drop this method of stepping down the voltage works pretty well but you can hardly call it convenient for example if you have to drop 12 volts you will need as many as 20 diodes wouldn't it be nice to have a component with a fixed voltage drop that exceeds 0. 7 volts and such component exists it's called zener diode a zener diode looks very similar to a regular diode sometimes they can even be confused when forward biased the zinner diet works pretty much the same way as a regular diet demonstrating voltage drop of about 0. 7 volts but if you apply voltage in reverse polarity that is reverse bias the zener diode it will also conduct electric current and its voltage drop in Reverse mode can range from 1 to several tens of volts depending on the reverse breakdown voltage rating of the actual part so the working polarity of a zener diode is reversed and it's a node is usually connected to the negative power rail in most cases you can find out the voltage rating of a particular zener diode only by the designation on the package or by measuring it with a metering device for example they already mentioned GM 328 Universal tester most zener diodes cannot be measured with a multimeter because the voltage across the probes is not high enough to reverse bias the component you can also measure the zener voltage drop with a regular voltmeter all you have to do is apply voltage to diodes terminals that would be enough to reverse bioset then measure the drop however you can do it important only if you've made sure the current strength in your circuit is limited if you are using a lab power supply that allows to set maximum current for example the DPS 5020 you need to set it to the minimum value or you can connect a resistor in series with your power supply the value should be several kilo ohms remember at the very beginning of this video we mentioned that resistors can limit current as a result by the way we can come up with a simplistic voltage stabilizer circuit as we can see the lab power supply is set to 23 volts but the zener diode limits voltage at 16.

4 volts however output current strength of such stabilizer will be very low since current is limited by a resistor and you cannot use it to power a mobile phone or a motor for example now let us talk about inductive components that's basically Transformers and inductors these devices are pretty simple by Design they consist of one or more coils of wire called windings usually centered on a ferrite core some Transformers are oval and some are rectangular some contain only a few turns while the others depending on their purpose may have several thousands there's another also very common layout in which core is made up of a solid ferrite ring it's called a magnetic circuit and the windings are laid around its circumference perpendicular to the tangent such devices are called toroidal Transformers advantages of such design are smaller weight and dimensions A reduced noise level and most importantly a higher efficiency the obvious disadvantage of a taroid transformer is the more complex process of winding which requires a special device and the factory however thyroid winding is performed by a robot which significantly reduces production costs the purpose of an electric Transformer or simply a Transformer is to transfer energy from one electric circuit to another without electrically connecting them to each other Transformers can also be used to step up and step down voltage and can be found in any power supply that plugs into a household wall outlet a Transformer has at least two windings they are called primary and secondary they are electrically isolated from each other the input voltage is fed to the primary winding and the output voltage is picked up from the secondary winding when ac voltage is applied to the primary the energy contained in electric current is converted into magnetism which passing through the magnetic core then gets converted back into electricity and the second recoil and that's basically the method that allows transfer of electric energy without electrical contact in general it is possible to step down voltage in different ways and strictly speaking a Transformer is not necessary to achieve this but the main reason why Transformers are used almost everywhere is user safety considerations any electronic device that assumes interaction with a human is not allowed to have a direct electrical connection to the wall outlet as the Transformers windings are isolated by design it can provide the so-called galvanic isolation that is isolation of output circuits from the input circuits so anyone who uses say a USB charger does not have the slightest chance of being electrocuted by simultaneously touching the USB cable and for example a radiator heater since there is no circuit between the mains plug and the output connector of the USB charger which as you can see can be easily verified with a multimeter if the multimeter detects a circuit in your case your charger must go directly to the garbage bin it's dangerous to use it a Transformer can only operate on alternating current if you connect a light bulb to the secondary coil and a battery to the primary coil the bulb will only flash once but will not glow constantly this is because Transformers only transfer energy while the magnetic field inside the magnetic circuit is being changed and the direct current cannot provide such change the inductor also called a choke or a reactor is similar to the Transformer by Design and can also have a conventional or thyroid layout but unlike a Transformer the inductor has only one winding and only two terminals the inductor just like a capacitor can store energy however it releases all energy immediately after the supply voltage is removed unlike the capacitor which can store it for a relatively long time you can observe the operation of a choke with the help of two simple experiments here you can see a light bulb a choke and a battery let us connect all these elements in series as we can see when the bulb is wired for a choke it does not light up instantly but with some delay this is because the moment the circuit is closed part of the energy is stored in the magnetic circuit of the choke that is it's being charged when the core of the choke is saturated energy begins to flow into the load now let us wire the bulb and the choke in parallel the bulb also turns on with a slight delay but that is because the very first moment the choke imposes load on the battery a more interesting effect is observed when the battery is disconnected we can see that the bulb does not go out instantly but gives an additional Flash this happens because once the supply voltage is removed the inductor transfers the energy stored in its core to the bulb now let us modify the circuit a bit it is known that the voltage Spike that occurs on inductor's terminals again unlike in a capacitor has a reverse polarity so if we connect a diode and series with the bulb we will have a chance to observe the process of Choke discharging separately now the bulb flashes only when the power is turned off the main physical property of a choke is its inductance inductance indicates the amount of energy a particular inductor can store and is measured in Henry's the unit is named after the American scientist Joseph Henry who discovered the phenomenon of self-induction the inductor is one of the most important components in modern electronics and its relevance is only increasing every power supply unit on the planet uses one nowadays another typical function of an inductor is high frequency noise filtering as we have observed the inductor absorbs the primary voltage Spike that occurs when power is applied to the bulb in a similar way being part of a power supply it Smooths out all sorts of spikes and noises that occurred during the operation of the device inductors nowadays are also very commonly used in Step Up and step down DC DC converters and I would like to say a few words about the ferrite course also called ferret beads which can be seen on laptop power supplies USB and some other computer cables contrary to popular belief they do not serve the purpose of protecting the device from external interference it's actually the opposite to limit and clean common mode noise generated from either a signal line or the power cable itself the cable due to its length plays the role of an antenna which can emit radio waves when your laptop or USB device operates so the ferrite thyroid is needed to limit its electromagnetic interference [Music] we have finally made it to the part where we speak about the component that I'd like to call the king of electronics his majesty the transistor ladies and gentlemen in a nutshell the purpose of the transistor is to amplify weak signals that is why it's primarily used in audio and radio devices amplifiers tape recorders radio receivers television sets microphones Etc today its application is certainly not limited to this area and the difficulty of understanding its operation is explained by the fact that unlike a resistor or even a diode the transistor is a very versatile element it has several different modes of operation which are determined perhaps this is the most important thing to remember right away primarily by how it is connected in a particular circuit and of course there are also several types of transistors which have different properties and characteristics depending on purpose and scope like I said transistors are mostly used for amplifying signals this is an Arduino LED flasher as at Mega's outputs can sink 40 milliamps Max you pretty much cannot wire to it anything except a regular LED but you can use a transistor switch to amplify its signal as you can see now we are flashing a light bulb and if you install a more powerful transistor here you can drive an even more powerful load accordingly the transistor has three terminals they are called emitter collector and base so when connecting it is necessary to follow the diagram that shows their arrangement in electronics it's called pin out you can find this information in the components data sheet but if you have trouble downloading it you can always use the GM 328 Universal transistor tester to find it for example this part has the following pin out base collector emitter if you use transistor as a switch collector is where you attach the load and base is where you feed the control signal and there are basically two types of transistors and type and p-type in an npn transistor current flows from the collector to the emitter in a PNP transistor it's the opposite from the emitter to The Collector current flow Direction just like in a diode is also reflected in transistor schematic symbol the arrow the transistor has many other important characteristics and properties the most important one is the current gain in our case it's 68.