Lessons in Resistance
Here begins my personal journey into creating circuits and hacking electronics.
This first lesson in Make: Electronics was simply about getting comfortable with electricity and starting to use my tools.
The book advocates "learning by discovery" so what a better way to begin than by electrocuting myself! The first part of the first lesson is "lick a battery" so that's what I did. As you might know or imagine, this creates an unpleasant tingle on your tongue, and leaves a metallic aftertaste. I'm not certain this taught me anything (it's been probably 24 years or so since I first licked a battery) but I'm determined to do every little step and exercise in the book, so lick I did!
This first lesson in Make: Electronics was simply about getting comfortable with electricity and starting to use my tools.
The book advocates "learning by discovery" so what a better way to begin than by electrocuting myself! The first part of the first lesson is "lick a battery" so that's what I did. As you might know or imagine, this creates an unpleasant tingle on your tongue, and leaves a metallic aftertaste. I'm not certain this taught me anything (it's been probably 24 years or so since I first licked a battery) but I'm determined to do every little step and exercise in the book, so lick I did!
But this isn't fun, it's science! So in addition to the straight touch, I also tried licking the battery after drying my tongue off with a paper towel, and used a battery clip with leads to apply the touch at different widths. According to the manual this should have produced different sensations due to varying resistance, but honestly I found all the zaps to feel pretty much the same.
Before moving on though, there was a bit more fun to be had: Trying to convince my wife to lick the battery! Apparently this is something she's never done before, and it took probably 20 minutes of giggling and cringing and coercing before she finally had the courage to try, but in the end she did it.
At this point, I made some kind of joke about my wife "demonstrating electrical resistance" because life isn't worth living if you don't make puns at every opportunity.
Before moving on though, there was a bit more fun to be had: Trying to convince my wife to lick the battery! Apparently this is something she's never done before, and it took probably 20 minutes of giggling and cringing and coercing before she finally had the courage to try, but in the end she did it.
At this point, I made some kind of joke about my wife "demonstrating electrical resistance" because life isn't worth living if you don't make puns at every opportunity.
The second half of the exercise involved quantifying my tongue, as well as some other materials, to learn a bit more about resistance. So I got out my brand new multimeter ($9.99 at Canadian Tire, awww yeah), set it to measure resistance, and stuck it to things.
I don't know if the cheap equipment just wasn't sensitive or if I have an exceptionally resist-y tongue, but I was unable to take a reading from that particular organ. I also tried moist and sweaty skin as mentioned in the book, and got nothing. I tested it on wire and bits of metal and got appropriately low readings so the thing was working. Finally I got some numbers to appear on the dial by probing some water with salt dissolved in it.
While the actual experiments were fairly unremarkable, it was fun using a multimeter for the first time, and the book contains a lot of good supplementary information.
Alright, one project down! On to the second one.
I don't know if the cheap equipment just wasn't sensitive or if I have an exceptionally resist-y tongue, but I was unable to take a reading from that particular organ. I also tried moist and sweaty skin as mentioned in the book, and got nothing. I tested it on wire and bits of metal and got appropriately low readings so the thing was working. Finally I got some numbers to appear on the dial by probing some water with salt dissolved in it.
While the actual experiments were fairly unremarkable, it was fun using a multimeter for the first time, and the book contains a lot of good supplementary information.
Alright, one project down! On to the second one.