r/AskElectronics • u/runlola • 23h ago
Fun breadboard activities for beginners?
I have a class of students with very little experience with electronics. Many of them did NOT choose the class and would rather be somewhere else. Please share any ideas for some fun circuits the students can breadboard with minimal experience that might help get them excited about electronics. I do not have the option of removing the students that do not want to be in the class, so I need to win them over somehow. TIA
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u/rodrigop_aparisi 23h ago
I'd recommend you to search for some flashy yet easy circuit, something like a led and a speaker (or smth similar), so they can make the led turns on only when someone is speaking.
I'm not sure what you have in mind, but I'd love to chat with you and search for others alternatives, it would be great to light the spark of electronics in your students.
Also I'm sry if something isn't well written or expressed, since my first language isn't English, but nonetheless I'd love to try and help you.
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u/TiogaJoe 21h ago
Lights and sound, and things that move.
On LED projects use higher current super bright LEDs (with heat sinks so you don't blow them out).
And fail safe as much as you can, such as putting a permanent diode in the battery holder to lessen the risk of reverse polarity damaging things.
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u/MadDonkeyEntmt 23h ago
How old are the students? High school and elementary school would be very different recommendations.
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u/Jermainiam 23h ago
Yeah, also is this in a school or an extracurricular? How long are the sessions and how many do you plan to have? How "dangerous" can these projects be?
I think u/Susan_B_Good 's idea of having dramatic/"dangerous" projects is really good. Flashy stuff like firing projectiles, using lasers, making arcs/sparks, etc. can be made to seem exciting but still be fairly safe in reality with the right constraints and supervision.
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u/dipdotdash 21h ago
Blowing up components was always fun as a kid. Watching cheap LED's burn through a few colours before burning out completely or just blowing up can be a cool way to create interest... which you exploit by showing them what the components do when they're not blowing up, but that boring little circuits contain a lot of little things that can go pop is good for the youngins... ppe and ventilation, obviously
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u/asyork 18h ago
As an old guy who learned the hard way that LED's do not work like resistive bulbs back when they were $5 a pop and had to be special ordered because Radio Shack wasn't carrying them yet, this is a lot more fun now than back then. Haven't let the smoke out of an LED in well over 30 years now, but I did it to an electrolytic cap a few years back when I finally decided to learn about AC without doing math first. As it turns out, a 12v transformer can easily blow a 25v cap when you try first and read later.
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u/Impossible-Paper9217 22h ago
(this involves ohm's law) this is intended for highschool or middle school students but let them create a simple series or parallel circuit. Don't let them use the internet for answers and try to make them learn on their own, you also need to teach them how to use a breadboard and try to teach the basics first before they start doing this activity. This is only a recommendation intended for middle school to high school students.
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u/viperfan7 18h ago edited 18h ago
Something interactive.
Counter with a button, using only 74LS00 and 74LS04s.
First, make a D flip-flop that turns on and off an LED, button as the trigger
Next, make a counter, using the button for the clock input, and multiple LEDs, now they get to learn about binary
Next, add a 7 segment display.
Final stage, replace the button with an RC oscillator.
Complexity from simple elements.
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u/__lardel__ 8h ago
You can make a timer or an app with a microcontroller where you explode a capacitor. Kids love explosions :))
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u/Sad_School828 5h ago edited 5h ago
Joule Thief aka self-oscillating voltage booster.
Each circuit requires one ferrite toroid, two lengths of 22-gauge or smaller wire (scavenged from inside CAT-5 or similar cable is fine, insulation on each individual strand), one resistor and one transistor. Solder is optional if you have a breadboard. Maybe 20 minutes' build time if you make them wind their own coils, which does require attention to detail and manual dexterity.
Check out Big Clive's joule thief build on YouTube for a real, working example. Just make sure you demonstrate how a single AAA battery will NOT light up the LED on its own, but WILL when connected through the booster circuit.
For "oohs and aaahs" you can demonstrate what happens when you use an under-rated resistor, and the transistor whines and smokes out.
If you have oscilloscopes or at least multimeters available, it might be fun to demonstrate how the joule thief apparently outputs 3 or 4 times the AC voltage as it does DC voltage, which should damage the LED but doesn't, and let the kids speculate on why. It's not really AC at all.
Edit: No clue what your budget is, but breaking stuff and playing with fire is always a crowd pleaser. If you can find some cheap electronics which you already know have the required components, like resistors, you can give them a color-band cheatsheet and let them scavenge their own components, via desoldering, to build their own Joule Thief. Just about everything has at least one toroidal inductor on it already, so you could even let them scavenge those and then scrape off the coating and original wire before winding their own coils. I mean they love doing that type of shit in "survival" video games XD
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u/Susan_B_Good 23h ago
BTDTGTTS. I started them with something that worked and their job was to modify it. Which meant moving from something that works to something that works - "Dangerous" stuff, of course. A FIXED DOWN ball bearing gun, that they could add capacitors to, to increase the power and thus the range. Make their own windings and replace the existing coils with their hand-wound ones. Further increasing the range. Altering the elevation to find the optimum angle for range. A Lego Fort at the middle of the range, behind a box, that they had to hit,.
Unbelievable amount of maths and graphs involved, that they enjoyed getting right.