As said in my earlier post, I was building a kitchen timer. I explained the main components needed to make it work and now I got to soldering my first electronic circuit. I had my dad help me out, and according to him, I did a pretty good job, for a beginning beginner  . We started with the middle and worked our way out, until doing the LEDs the whole way around and then the battery. Here are some photos. There aren’t many in between the start and end of the soldering because we didn’t take any pauses, we just kept soldering.

The Soldering Iron we used, waiting for it to heat up sufficiently.

The Soldering of the buzzer (very middle) and the operating button (left side). Pretty well done huh?

We cut the ends off after each solder, because most of them got in the way.

Now doing the LEDs, one after the other.

Finished soldering everything.

Using the provided screws, I screwed the circuit and battery holder together, and then popped that into the case. This is the finished product, with all the lights on.

Thanks to Dad who took some of the pictures and sacrificed the morning of his day off for me. And thanks to Mum who made this gorgeous apple pie after that didn’t even last five minutes on the table. Below is a video demonstrating my awesome new timer.

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On an ongoing project of building a Kitchen Timer, there are many things that I do not know what they are or what they are for. Here is a an explanation for four of these things:

My Capacitors

• Capacitor: a capacitor is in a way like a battery. It stores passing energy on a circuit. Unlike a battery, which creates new electrons to store them, a capacitor just stores already existing electrons. Also unlike a battery, a capacitor can completely empty itself within milliseconds. A battery would take at least a few minutes. Capacitors are used in camera flashes because of their ability to charge and decharge quickly. For the flash to be effective, the capacitor gets full, and when the picture gets taken, the capacitor lets all it’s electricity out to create that sudden bright light. A capacitor’s storage can vary and it also depends on the number of volts on the current: a low storage capacitor would be much more efective on a low voltage current, and a high storage capacitor would be better on a high voltage current.
  

  My Integrated Circuit

• Integrated Circuit: an integrated circuit, or most commonly known as a chip, or microchip, is a mini electronic circuit built on a wafer of pure silicon crystals. On top of the wafers are millions or thousands of tiny resistors, transistors and capacitors. They are used in almost all electronic devices and are also in some cars.


My Resistors

• Resistor: resistors restrict the amount of current flowing through a circuit. This could be used for a light, to make the bulb shine brightly, and then to make it dim. Resistors can only ‘resist’ up until a certain number of ohms (SI unit of resistance). To know how much the resistor can stop, colour codes are used. There are bands of colour around the resistors which are used to know each digit in the amount of ohms able to resist. For example, one of the resistors in my kit has the colours: ‘orange’ ‘orange’ ‘brown’ ‘gold’. This should turn out as 3.3 ohms using the colour code here.


My Transistor

• Transistor: a transistor is a device used to 1) amplify or 2) switch electronic currents. 1, when it amplifies, it takes in a feeble, or small, current on one side and transforms it into a stronger, bigger current and it goes out the opposite way it came. It basically boosts up the input current to create a larger output current. 2, when it switches, the small current entering has the ability to allow or deny a larger current from entering the transistor. Basically, the smaller current can turn the bigger current on or off, like a switch.

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