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This week we began toying with circuits. Circuits, although seemingly unnecessary in a computer science class, is fundamental to the computer. Both are built according to how electricity works. A few of the components of a circuit include, but are not limited to: logic gates, input, output, and current. One logic gate, the flip flop gate, has an interesting function where you can change input to enable change in the output. This allows the computer to remember the process, which birthed computer memory.

This is an online demonstration of a circuit that has 3 logic gates: a AND gate, in which all sources of current must be on to turn on a diode, a OR gate, in which only one source of current must be on to turn on a diode, and a XOR gate, which is like an OR gate, except that if more than 1 source of current is on then the diode at the end of the circuit will not turn on.

This is an or gate that my friends and I built with a breadboard. Here we used resistors, LEDs, capacitors, and random wires to create a circuit that turned on a LED(s). It did not go without frustration, but it was a good example of a real-life OR gate, not like the one we created in CEDAR Logic to turn counting into binary code.

This is what we made after our OR gate: our AND gate. This circuit, as you know, requires all sources of current going through the gate to be on or else the LED won't light up. This made working on the breadboard difficult. Our LEDs burned out.
Also today we began using soldering irons and making circuits work with solder, a metal substance melted onto circuits to secure connections. Below is a finished product.