Sometimes Things Work How They're Supposed To
So now that my tongue is a little numb, it's time to direct the pain to the electronics themselves: The goal of this project is to short circuit a battery. Safety goggle time!
The premise was simple: short circuit a AA battery, feel the wires getting hot, feel the battery getting hot, and then stop before explosion.
Well, everything went as planned, so nothing more to report there!
The second half of the exercise involved adding a fuse to the equation. The text explained that the fuse contains a thin wire and that the heat I was feeling would destroy that wire, protecting the circuit from damage. So I re-wired the circuit with the fuse in place and waited for something to happen.
The premise was simple: short circuit a AA battery, feel the wires getting hot, feel the battery getting hot, and then stop before explosion.
Well, everything went as planned, so nothing more to report there!
The second half of the exercise involved adding a fuse to the equation. The text explained that the fuse contains a thin wire and that the heat I was feeling would destroy that wire, protecting the circuit from damage. So I re-wired the circuit with the fuse in place and waited for something to happen.
And waited. Nothing was happening. Wires weren't getting warm, fuse wasn't popping, nada.
So I got out the multimeter and tested the fuse, and also tested a spare fuse. The one from my circuit was dead.
Then it struck me, of course it was dead! It worked. It was destroyed because of the short circuit. It just didn't have such visible internal damage as the picture in the textbook did. Silly me!
So I chucked the burnt out fuse and moved on.
So I got out the multimeter and tested the fuse, and also tested a spare fuse. The one from my circuit was dead.
Then it struck me, of course it was dead! It worked. It was destroyed because of the short circuit. It just didn't have such visible internal damage as the picture in the textbook did. Silly me!
So I chucked the burnt out fuse and moved on.