Circuit Lab

Answer theory questions and often complete hands-on circuit tasks involving DC circuits and measurements.

What this event is about

Circuit concepts (Ohm’s law, series/parallel, power) plus practical breadboarding/measurement skills depending on the year’s rules.

Setup (team of 2, ~50 min, Class III calculator, unbound notes/binder of any size; optional personal multimeter if allowed)

Organize notes by written-test topic list; written portion is 50–75% of score, hands-on 25–50%.
History: Ampere, Coulomb, Kirchhoff, Volta, Ohm, Hertz, Boole — who contributed what.
Charges/fields, static electricity hazards, Coulomb’s Law; DC vs AC characteristics/sources/hazards.
Drill units and calculations for current, voltage, resistance, power, energy; series/parallel, open/short, Ohm’s Law, schematics.
Control devices: switches, relays, fuses, GFCIs, breakers; silicon PN junctions and single-junction devices (diodes, LEDs).
Digital: logic gates, truth tables, universal gates, boolean expressions, De Morgan’s Law, combinational circuits (mux, adders). Binary representation and binary addition only (no negatives/floating point).
States/Nationals only: circuit analysis with Kirchhoff’s Voltage and Current Laws.
Hands-on loop: breadboard + multimeter fluency; practice mystery-resistor from voltage only, power calculations, equal LED brightness, USB charger label math, logic circuits from truth tables, troubleshooting, 3-way SPDT wiring, equivalent resistance from given resistors.
Skip out-of-scope topics listed in rules (AC theory, capacitance/inductance, oscilloscopes, sequential logic, etc.). Time combined written + hands-on practices weekly.

Draw the schematic before touching wires. Label polarities.