An Introduction To Circuits
Yuck, circuits, just the name of it gives me a bad taste in my mouth, but as with taxes, we should learn how to do them, otherwise you'll probably have a bad time. The following section introduces how standard circuits work and what to look out for.
A circle of life
A circuit is by Oxford Languages described as "a roughly circular line, route, or movement that starts and finishes at the same place".
An electrical circuit is working the same way, electricity go out one place (normally an output) and end in either an input or in ground. We can see the electrical circuit as a circle of life, where life only persists if you 'go with the flow'. Now, if you suddenly would have electricity going against the circuit flow, you're going to have a bad time. Keeping it real, you would worst case fry your microcontroller, but with respect to the 'circle of life' analogy, you would try to travel backwards in time, which in turn would require 1.21 gigawatts!
Wait A Minute, Doc. Are You Telling Me You Built A Time Machine...Out Of An Arduino?
Jokes aside, its important that you check your circuits applying electricity to it, as you can accidentally fry both components and microcontrollers if you're not careful.
Tips to avoiding short circuiting
1. Use a breadboard when creating smaller circuits for testing
If you're in doubt