What is soldering?

Soldering.

n. any of various alloys fused and applied to the joint between metal objects to unite them without heating the objects to the melting point.

v. to join (metal objects) with solder.

Before coming to the workshop, I really had no idea what soldering was, and looking up this definition was not exactly the clearest of definitions. When our class began the workshop, it finally hit me that this word was familiar to me from the dreary PHYS 212 class I took long ago. Soldering can be used to hold parts of a circuit board together. In this particular workshop, Mitch Altman was teaching us how to make the “Trippy Synchronized LED”. The parts we used are shown in this picture:

The soldering gun is the heating agent that heats up (to about 365 deg Fahrenheit) the solder, the metal wire that allows the parts of the circuit to adhere to the board. A wet sponge is provided to wipe the oxidized excess solder from the tip. The wire cutter is what it’s usually for, to cut off excess wire. The contents in the bag are the parts of the circuit board. The LED light is controlled by micro controllers in the board to produce a pattern of different colored lights. When someone passes their hand over the board, that sequence starts over, in this case from red on, caused by an invisible infrared light emitter and detector.

This week was especially eye-opening for me because circuits are something that I have encountered only in theory (and in class!) knowing only key words like resistor or capacitor. Especially now that electronics are being entwined with all “things”, namely the concept of the “Internet of Things”, this is an at-home skill that can prove to be very useful.