I've said this before, and, unfortunately, I must say it again: I'm really bad at keeping up with this blog.
I'm not going to promise anything my two dear readers, but I
shall do my best to will regularly update this blog now that I've written the majority of my college applications. Now, onward to Part II!
Project STARK: EYES ONLY
Fortunately, I never got a chance to talk to my Physics teacher about the circuitry, so I had to sit down and think about it for myself. Initially, I could not even figure out whether we designed the reactor in series or parallel (more on that later), but then I remembered lighting up the reactor while some lights didn't work. That immediately eliminated a series connection.
I then wanted to make a schematic of the reactor, aka an circuit diagram, but the parallel-ness of the circuit confused me, so I just drew a version of the reactor in paint--and everything hit me!
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| *The remaining electrons get recharged |
I then felt comfortably enough to move onto a professional circuit diagram, so I did!
Now isn't that neater? Now for a quick explanation.
Electricity is the flow of electrons. We use electricity to power things by utilizing the charge, or electromagnetic energy, each of those electrons carry. In a circuit, electrons flow from the positive terminal of a voltage source (usually a battery) to the negative terminal. Along the way, resistors, which are things that use electricity, take the electrons energy and do work--like an LED using the electron's energy to light up. Inside the voltage source, the depleted electrons literally get recharged with energy for another trip around the circuit until the battery itself runs out of energy.
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| Series Circuit: note the decreasing voltage and constant current |
Now there are two ways of designing a circuit, series or parallel. In a series circuit, all the resistors, batteries, and switches are lined up one after another
in series. This design allows for a constant flow of electrons, or
current, throughout the circuit. In exchange, the resistors on the circuit have to work with less and less electromagnetic energy since the previous resistor used up some voltage. Unfortunately, a series configuration's simplicity is also its weakness, for a failure in one device results in an incomplete circuit--bringing the entire circuit down.
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| Parallel Circuit |
A parallel circuit is the opposite. In a parallel configuration, like my Arc Reactor, electricity flows with an equal voltage to all resistors since they're parallel. However, splitting up the current to each of those resistors naturally weakens the current, so each resistor has to work with less electrons flowing through it at any given time. Furthermore, because each parallel path completes the circuit, a failure in one device won't bring down the entire circuit (hence, our use of the parallel design). However, this design also consumes more power, since the resistors on the circuit are drawing voltage from the source all at the same time.
So there you have it. I don't know the electrical specifications of the LEDs I used, else I would have added some math to this, but I hope y'all like it!
