A breadboard is used to make up temporary
circuits for testing or to try out an idea. No soldering is required so it
is easy to change connections and replace components. Parts will not be damaged
so they will be available to re-use afterwards.
The
photograph shows a typical small breadboard
which is suitable for beginners building simple
circuits with one or two ICs (chips). Larger
sizes are available.
The bread board has many
strips of metal (copper usually) which run
underneath the board. The metal strips are
laid out as shown below.
These strips connect the
holes on the top of the board. This makes
it easy to connect components together to build
circuits. To use the bread board, the legs
of components are placed in the holes (the
sockets). The holes are made so that they
will hold the component in place. Each
hole is connected to one of the metal strips
running underneath the board.
Each wire forms a
node. A node is a point in a circuit where two
components are connected. Connections
between different components are formed by
putting their legs in a common node.
On
the bread board, a node is the row of holes that
are connected by the strip of metal underneath.
The long top and bottom
row of holes are usually used for power supply
connections.
The rest of the circuit is
built by placing components and connecting them
together with jumper wires. Then when a
path is formed by wires and components from the
positive supply node to the negative supply
node, we can turn on the power and current flows
through the path and the circuit comes alive.
For chips with many legs
(ICs), place them in the middle of the board so
that half of the legs are on one side of the
middle line and half are on the other side.
A
circuit might look like the following.
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