4.0 Transistors
The first transistor was invented sometime during the beginning of the 20th Century and through the enhancement of technology, transistors are used today as an amplifier and also as a high speed switch.
You should be aware that since it is used as a high-speed switch, it can be adopted to switch on your bomb detonator. By adopting the transistor, we do not need to personally cause an ignition event to detonate a bomb.
Before proceeding further, it would be useful to know that transistors when used as an electrical switch, only low voltages should be used e.g. 1A or less. Also transistors cannot be used as switches for Alternating Current (AC) or high voltages. Where AC or high voltages are used, the relay (next Chapter) would be a better option but fortunately in this bomb detonator project you are undertaking, we would only be dealing with DC i.e. battery generated electricity.
For the next hands-on task, this is what I want you to do. Go get any electrical junk you have lying around your house that you will not be using anymore. It can be a broken computer, laptop, DVD player, radio, etc. Search for a transistor which has three legs.
After obtaining the transistor, here is what I would like you to do. Look at the photo below. Let’s call the light bulb side as the “right side” and the transistor shall be called the “centre” and the 1.5V cell shall be called the “left side”. (Please click on the photo to enlarge it or else you will not see the whole photograph).
The above is similar to Chapter 3’s Lighting a Light Bulb circuit except that it has an additional transistor. A close up view of the transistor is as shown below: –
At the battery terminal, the connection is as below where the red cable is the positive terminal while the black one is negative: –
Clip the red crocodile clip to one leg of the transistor as shown in the photos below and make sure that the connection is correct. You also need to clip the white crocodile clip to the centre of the transistor.
Now you can activate / trigger the light bulb just by connecting the cell which is located on the left side and this is shown in the photograph below: –
Again, I end off this chapter with a video for you to watch how the transistor can act as a switch.