Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am trying to connect my circuit for measuring vibration frequency with light. The circuit is extremely small and I'm supposed to connect it to the wires for the battery source. How do I do that? Is there anyone who can tell or show me step by step instructions with pictures not drawings? Even a completed picture would be helpful. I'm on a time crunch here with a week to go.

Thanks.

If you bought the parts from the suggested source, you should have a battery holder for your three AA batteries. With the batteries in the correct way, the red wire is positive and the black is negative.

The project text suggested one of two ways of building the circuit. It only has two parts plus the battery, so you could have put the parts in a solderless breadboard or you could have soldered the resistor to pin 3 of the sensor. If you used the breadboard: take the black lead of the battery case and put it in a hole so that it's making contact with the free lead of the resistor and pin 1 of the sensor. Put the red lead in a hole so that it makes contact with pin 2. If you need some help with the breadboard (understanding how it makes connections), you might find this handy: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... cuit.shtml

If you soldered the resistor to the sensor, simply connect the free end of the resistor to pin 1 of the sensor and solder both of those to the black lead of your battery pack. The red lead gets soldered to pin 2 of the sensor. Be careful not to overheat the sensor by holding the soldering iron on the pin too long.

In either case, connect the A/D converter or oscilloscope to pin 3 and the ground of the converter or scope to pin 1.

I hope this helps clarify the instructions a bit, and good luck with your project!

Howard

Thank you Howard,

That was very helpful!