Elenco Upgrade Kit SC500 to SC750 - Manual (Page 4)

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The two-spring socket (?1) just has two springs, and won’t do
anything by itself. It is not used in any of the experiments. It was
included to make it easy to connect other electronic components to
your Snap Circuits
® . It should only be used by advanced users who
are creating their own circuits.
There are many different types of electronic components and basic
parts like resistors and capacitors have a wide range of available
values. For example, Snap Circuits
® includes five fixed-value
resistors (100 Ω , 1K Ω , 5.1K Ω , 10K Ω , and 100K Ω ). This is a very
limited choice of values, and difficult to design circuits with. Snap
Circuits
® also includes a adjustable resistor (RV), but it is difficult to
set this part to a particular value. You can place your resistors in
series and parallel to make different values (as is done with the
5.1K
Ω and 10K Ω in project #166), but this is also difficult with only
five values to choose from.
Many customers like to create their own circuits and asked us to
include more resistor values with Snap Circuits
® . We could have
done that, but you would never have enough. And resistors are not
very exciting components by themselves. You could try to use your
own resistors, but they are difficult to connect since normal
electronic parts come with wires on them instead of snaps.
The two-spring socket (?1) makes it easy to connect your own
resistors (and other parts) to circuits by connecting them between
the springs:
Any component with two wires coming from it (called leads) can be
connected with the two-spring socket (?1), assuming the leads are
long enough. Usually you will connect different values of resistors
or capacitors, but other components like LED’s, diodes, or
coils/inductors can also be used. You can usually find electronic
components at any store specializing in electronics.
You can design your own circuits or substitute new parts into the
projects in the manuals. For LED’s, diodes, or electrolytic
capacitors, be sure to connect your parts using the correct polarity
or you may damage them. Never exceed the voltage ratings of any
parts. Never connect to external voltage sources. ELENCO
® IS
NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY PARTS DAMAGED BY
IMPROPER CIRCUIT DESIGN OR WIRING. The two-spring
socket is only intended for advanced users.
About the TWO-SPRING SOCKET (?1)
Resistor Capacitor
To learn more about how circuits work, visit www.snapcircuits.net or page 85 to find out about our Student Guides.