Welcome to the wonderful world of soldering
(pronounced sot-er-ing).
Today you will be constructing your circuit project. It is yours to keep once you finish.
1) Plug in your iron and wet your sponge, keeping any solder bits out of the sink's drain.
2) Open your circuit project kit. Identify all the pieces and make sure nothing is missing.
3) Start positioning your pieces on the board. Remember you want the solder to be on the side with the copper tracks. Be careful of pieces that must go in facing a certain direction. These are often IC chips, lights (called LEDs), capacitors and diodes. Read your instructions carefully!
4) A note about IC chips. Many projects will have a chip (it looks like a black rectangular spider). These chips will have holder. The reason for the holders is that the chips are heat sensitive. Solder the holder in, but do not put the chip in the holder until you are ready to test in step 5.
5) Once you think you know where all the pieces go, you may begin to solder. Remember solder conducts electricity. On your circuit board, if the holes are not connected by the copper paths then the holes must not be connected by solder either. These are called solder bridges.
6) Once you have completed soldering have MM or another teacher check your board and place the chip in its holder. If it passes the initial inspection you will be given a 9-v battery to test your project.
7) From here on out, it's troubleshooting. Many projects do not work the first time. But the chances of success on the first try are increased greatly by paying close attention to the circuit diagrams, soldering carefully to avoid huge blobs and soldering enough to connect a component on all sides to the board.
For homework:
Write a reflection (two-paragraph minimum) about
what have you learned.
What
possible situations during a Mission to Mars might you need the skills you have
developed?
If
your team experienced an emergency, what are your relative strengths that
pertain to building or fixing an electrical circuit? How would you help save the day?