This week in art & design, we worked with LEDs, batteries, breadboards, and Arduinos. Last year, we did something similar, but we just copied circuits from a book rather than understanding what the components do. This week, I learned how to make a simple circuit with a switch:

I learned that the wires conencted to the switch must be right next to each other in order to fully connect the piece of metal inside so it can complete the ciruit.

I also watched another one of Ms. Macdonald’s video tutorials and made this:

I ran into trouble with getting the lights to turn on. From this, I learned that the things that are supposed to be connected must be in the same row or column on the breadboard. I also learned that the longer sides of the LEDs are the ‘ground’ side, so that made it much easier to connect it to certain wires. This was an extremely fun hands-on activity for learning about circuits, and I can’t wait to tackle the RGB LED circuits next!