Learn About Push Button Switches for Circuit Bending

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: All right. So let's talk a little bit about switches. Basically what a switch is, an electrical switch, is just a little device that has different positions in it and depending on what that position is it either causes a contact that completes the circuit or takes a contact away that breaks the circuit, all right? What I mean is that just either allows the flow of electrons between the contacts or it stops the flow of electrons between contact. All right, that's basically what a switch, kind of a no-brainer. But there's a lot of different kinds of switches for different applications. So, for example, kind of a simple type of switch is what's called--they're often called a momentary switch, which means it doesn't stay in position. And so, the action of the switch occurs--here, I'll use this red one. The action of the switch occurs when you push it, but it's not staying in that position, right? It's got a little spring, so it comes back up. So, what this switch is doing is it's either making or breaking the contact when you push it, and then when you let go, it's going back to the other position. And so, they sell both kinds of switches. They sell switches which are called, momentary push button switch - "normally on." So that's normally on then that means if I was to connect a wire to this terminal and a wire to this one, there would be electricity flowing between them, and by pushing that switch I break the flow of electricity until I release it again. That's a normally-on switch. But they also make the other type, which is called "normally-off" and that just works the other way around. Than, when I don't press the button, when I don't press the switch, the connection isn't made, and I only make the connection when I press the switch. The only way to really tell the difference without digging into them and taking them apart is to just make sure to buy or order the right kind. If you buy them in bulk, they'll be marked like this is a little package that's marked as normally-on, so you know that in order to break circuit, you have to push that switch, and if it's normally-off, to make the circuit then you push the switch. So, those are momentary switches and they're kind of the simplest kind of switches you can use. But they don't stay in position. And so, next we'll talk about switches that do."