Learn About Resistors for Homemade Synthesizers

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Lorin Parker with Expert Village, and this little guy is a resistor, and you see these in almost any piece of electronics anywhere. And you can see that it has colored bands on it and it has this sort of funny looking sort of pinto bean shape with two leads coming off either end. This is the second component that determines our frequencies. The relationship between the resistor and the capacitor determines the frequency of the oscillator. Now this is a simple resistor that is 220 ohms, which is the measurement for resistance. Let's not worry too much about ohms right now, but also it's important to note that not only does this exist in this singular form, but you can also make resistors that are variable. So this one right here goes from zero ohms all the way up to two million ohms as I turn the shaft, so I can take it from two million back down to zero. And if I put a knob on this, it comes a very nice control, and that's what gives us a variable oscillator. And then finally, resistors can also be varied with things like light. This is a photo resistor, and it becomes more or less resistive, more or less ohms, depending upon how much light is hitting it. So we can create a circuit that is controlled by being shown a flashlight or a bulb, or being covered up from ambient light with your hands. So these are just three basic types of resistors, but they provide sort of the interface that we can change within this network of the capacitor and the resistor determining the frequency of our oscillator.

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