Multimeters:

Multimeters have two wires. If a multimeter is in parallel with a component, it measures the potential difference between the two wires, aka how many voltages this measured component is taking from the battery. Multimeters are particularly useful in analyzing and troubleshooting circuits. If a circuit is open but we don’t know which component is open, we can put a multimeter in parallel with each component. When measuring the open component, the value of the voltage should be very close to the battery voltage because the multimeter itself has very large resistance and will take up most of the battery voltage.

Troubleshooting:

I put the two legs of a photocell in the same row on a breadboard, and it could not control the brightness of the LED that is in series with it. The reason is that the holes on the same rows are connected. It is like each row has one wire beneath. If I make the photocell parallel with a piece of wire, the current will not even pass the photocell, and thus the photocell won’t be able to control the current.

Final projects:

Tia made a distortion pedal for her guitar all by herself. I’m just so impressed by how good these dry and wet effects sound in the demos. When I scrolled down and looked at all the fancy formulae and equations and descriptions, I just can’t believe we will need to understand all of these in one semester. Cameron made two filters that cut certain frequencies. The filters have two large sliders that can be adjusted easily. I really like the sliders since it seems pleasant for people to adjust. With these two filters working in combination, Cameron can create a number of different and interesting effects. Amelia creates a nice box for her synthesizer. It looks so clean and user-friendly. It has 7 keys and one knob that allows user to play different sounds. I saw many potentialmeters used in her synthesizer. I guess that is for tuning?