© James R. Strickland 2016

James R. Strickland, Junk Box Arduino, 10.1007/978-1-4842-1425-1_5

5. Collector, Base, and Emitter

James R. Strickland

(1)Highlands Ranch, Colorado, USA

Transistors are as ubiquitous as dirt. In the CPU of the computer I’m typing this on, there are 1.4 billion of them, mostly acting as switches, plus over 128 billion more in the RAM. The number of these devices in the world is truly mind-boggling. In this chapter, we’re going to deal with discrete transistors: the kind packaged one at a time with three leads out the bottom. This isn’t just an academic exercise. If you need to shift more current or voltage than the pins on your Cestino can handle, you’ll probably reach for a transistor, particularly a Darlington transistor. ...

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