LED Light 10mm Green
LED Light 10mm Green
Student's name
First and last name, and class if you know it. This goes on the pack label.
Pickup available at Mega DC – Tweed Heads South
Usually ready in 24 hours
A 10mm LED, which is the point - small ones are unteachable
One green LED, 10mm diameter, diffused.
Standard hobby LEDs are 3mm or 5mm. In a classroom that size is a nuisance: fiddly to hold, hard to get into a terminal, and impossible for thirty students to see from where they are sitting. At 10mm this one is the size of a pencil eraser. A child can pick it up, get the legs into a clip and watch it light without being told which way round it went.
The diffused lens matters too. A clear LED is a bright point you cannot look at; a diffused one glows evenly, so the whole class can see whether the circuit worked from across the room.
What it teaches: current flow, and the fact that a diode only lets current through one way. Turn it around and nothing happens - which is a more memorable lesson about polarity than any diagram.
One thing we want to be straight about. The supplier lists this LED as compatible with 5V, 9V and 12V supplies, which would normally mean a current-limiting resistor is built into the leg. They do not actually say so. If you are wiring bare circuits at 9V or 12V rather than using a kit, ask us before you order and we will confirm it with the supplier. We would rather answer that question than have a box of dead LEDs turn up in your lab.