Circuit Construction Kit Review

The flash application, circuit construction kit version 3.2, is a great engineering tool. I have always had trouble visualizing and making circuits work correctly.  The University of Colorado at Boulder has developed a great tool to help engineers understand circuits. (http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/circuit-construction-kit-dc).

The circuit construction kit is available as a flash download.  Using flash programs are usually a problem for me because they don’t download and function correctly with my computer. This one downloaded and worked in a flash.

Immediately upon downloading, the application starts to offer you help creating circuits. By help I mean it says click here to start, which is about all you’re going to get. The program is entitled to help people understand circuits and develop circuits themselves. Users should already have some background knowledge about circuits. That being said, I think just by playing around and having some basic knowledge of electricity, that we all learned in middle school, is sufficient for using this application. Overall, it was fairly easy to download, for free I might add, and easy to use.

Circuit Interface and Toolbox

When using the application you can create circuits by adding wires, resistors, switches and power sources (batteries) into circuits. The various devices you can add to the circuit are represented with icons on the right hand side. The icons are easy to access and presented in a user friendly manner (see interface picture on the right). The side screen, where the icons are, acts like a tool bench for all your tools. Select the icon and click where you want it on the page and it’s there!  Other applications I have used were very difficult to find what you wanted and hard to implement into the circuit. Another thing the circuit construction kit does is it provides virtual tools that can be used to measure resistance and current. Having these measurement devices are very handy and useful for a real world application. Circuit construction does a great job presenting everything you need in an easy to use fashion.

Short Circuited (ie. Exploded Battery)

Another thing I liked about circuit construction was its flexibility. It’s possible to change just about everything in the circuit. As an engineer nothing is ever fixed so it’s important to be able to change the resistance of a resistor or the voltage of the power source. If you want to change the voltage, resistance or remove an item it only takes a click of the mouse. One flaw I did notice was in order to change the resistance in the wires you had to go under the advanced button and change it, unlike the simple mouse click it took to change the voltage or resistance elsewhere. The main thing circuit construction isn't, is elaborate. The application seems a bit elementary. It is that way in order to make it easy to use. The application works in general for simple circuits and more general stuff but I wouldn’t recommend testing and designing an Xbox circuit on it. That being said, the application does a really nice job interacting with changes you make and representing that in the circuit. You can always tell if the circuit is working correctly by the flowing blue balls (electrons) and if the light bulb you connected to the circuit is illuminated.  When you make changes to a working circuit the result is instantly known. As a result, you can test out a developing circuit idea you may have. The application clearly demonstrates what happens when resistance is increased, or the light is hooked up in series by dimming or increasing brightness in the light bulb. It even shows you when you cause a short circuit (see above picture). The changes made to the circuit are instantly represented in the circuit and indicates what is happening visually by the light bulb and electrons in the circuit. The flexibility of the application and instant notification are great advantages for this application.

Whether you’re attempting to replicate an actual circuit for a development or just trying to understand a problem with a circuit, this application is a great start for engineers who are involved with circuits. The circuit construction kit is easy to use, flexible and provides instant visual feedback. It has definitely helped me throughout my career. The circuit construction kit will help you understand circuits and help prove out circuit designs because it allows you to create actual circuits in a virtual world for no cost at all.