Chapter 3
Creating Your Own Mad-Scientist Lab
In This Chapter
Finding a suitable place to build your laboratory
Investing in good-quality tools
Picking out components to get you started
We love the Frankenstein films, especially the scenes in Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory that’s filled with the most amazing and exotic electrical gadgets. The mad doctor’s assistant, Igor, throws a giant knife switch at just the right moment and sparks fly, the music rises to a crescendo, the creature jerks to life and the crazy doctor yells ‘it’s alive!’.
Whichever of the Frankenstein movies is your favourite – the original 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, Mel Brooks’s 1974 Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder or Tim Burton’s recent Frankenweenie – they all have great laboratory scenes.
Fortunately, you don’t need a deserted castle or an elaborate mad-scientist laboratory to construct your own basic electronic circuits. You do, however, need to build yourself a modest workplace, equipped with a basic set of tools as well as some fundamental electronic components to work with.
In this chapter, we introduce you to the stuff you need to get before you can begin building electronic circuits. ...
