For those of you who missed my first blog, “Taste the Power! – Experiment 1”, I recently got the second edition of “Make: Electronics” by Charles Plattand decided to try all of the experiments presented in the book. This is my documentation of how the second experiment turned out.
Before we begin, for those who might be thinking of ignoring Mr. Platt’s advice and want to see what happens when you short a lithium battery, just watch this AWESOME video instead:
How to blow a fuse
I used two different 1.5 V AA brand new batteries, but unfortunately, I was unable to blow the 3 A fuse (I even tried with a 9 V battery).
Luckily, I had a 1 A fuse at home, which did burn, but only by applying the wires from the battery holder to it directly.
The reason I wasn’t able to blow the fuse with the test leads could be that some cheap test leads don’t allow enough current to flow through them.
The book has so far introduced us to batteries and fuses. To learn more about these components you can check out chapters 2 and 4 of Charles Platt’s “Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 1”.
If you would like to recreate this experiment yourself, you can get everything you need for this experiment from Digi-Key!