1. Creative Design & Innovation 1 Mrs. Shamsa Aziz Alshehhi
Key Vocabulary 10 Advance
Word Meaning
Electrical circuit A group of electrical components connected by
conductors.
Schematic
diagram
A drawing of an electrical circuit with symbols.
Voltage The difference in charge between two points.
Current The rate at which charge is flowing.
Resistance A material’s tendency to resist the ow of charge
(current).
DC Direct current provides a constant voltage or current.
Everything that runs off a battery, or uses a USB cable
for power relies on DC.
AC Alternating current describes the ow of charge that
changes direction periodically. The voltage level also
reverses along with the current. AC is used to deliver
power to houses, of ce buildings, etc.
Battery An electrical DC power source.
Resistor An electrical component that implements electrical
resistance as a circuit element.
2. Creative Design & Innovation 2 Mrs. Shamsa Aziz Alshehhi
Colour code table A colour table used to read the resistance value of a
resistor.
Breadboard A board for making a prototype of an electrical circuit.
Embedded system An embedded system is a computer system with a specie
c function, inside a larger mechanical or electrical system.
Microcontroller A microcontroller is on a single chip and contains
everything required to control an external system.
Input Collects signals from its environment
Processing A series of actions that produce something or that lead to
a result.
Output Sends signals out based on the input information.
Tolerance A maximum electrical or mechanical variation of
specifications that can be tolerated without affecting the
operation of a device.
Digital signal An electrical signal that represents information in the
pattern of bits. In Arduino, the values of a digital signal
are either HIGH or LOW.
Floating state A state that is changing between HIGH and LOW states.
Pull up/down
circuit
Circuit configurations that will prevent the floating state
from happening by pulling the digital signal to either
HIGH or LOW voltages using resistors.
PinMode A statement used to define the mode of a pin; either
3. Creative Design & Innovation 3 Mrs. Shamsa Aziz Alshehhi
(pin#,mode) INPUT or OUTPUT.
digitalRead(pin#) A statement used to read the digital signal of a pin;
either HIGH or LOW.
If-else A control statement that checks a certain condition and
will execute a specified code if the condition has been
met or some different code if it has not.
Analog signal A continuous signal that has infinite numbers to
represent it.
Potentiometer A three-terminal variable resistor.
Float data A number that has a decimal point.
If-else if If-else if statement is another method to implement
multiple test conditions.
PWM Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), is a technique for
generating an analog signal using digital means.
4. Creative Design & Innovation 4 Mrs. Shamsa Aziz Alshehhi
Time period (T)
Represents the time needed for one cycle of a signal to
be completed, the time of the ON and the OFF
combined.
Frequency (f) Is the number of complete cycles per second measured
in hertz unit.
Duty cycle (D) Is ratio between the ON time divided by the time
period.
RGB LED Three LEDs: red, green, and blue connected in one
package.