" The chances of success of your electronics project decrease exponentially with the use of faulty breadboards !!!" - The hypothesis of breadboard.
It works very well...at least in electrical department of COEP! Though the corollary is not true...(You can always take the credit for a surprisingly well working project inspite of a bumpy breadboard!!! :) ).That rectangular 7*4 device has given me a lot of trouble and a hell difficult run for my marks in the last semester!
Nevertheless it was worth the experience it gave me; all the fun n hustle n bustle; spats with the group members(we had lots of them! :)) and the most important - it made me sweat badly!
It so happened that we had to do a project for 50 marks in electronics and I was the group leader of 14 people....(Each one weird in own respect!!!). We were given with the responsibility of making a digital multiplier(4*4 bit). For the first few days,it was all leisurely work which begun with search for ICs and ended with a movie in the lawn(Remember Happy Days...?!). With a few days of search, we came to know ICs weren't available in the market; so we finalized on solution of cascading smaller ones.Now, here comes the entry of breadboard. The department had provided us with a breadboard which was...umm.....not well 'bred'. While cascading the two ICs just wont fit together!!! While Someone pressed one IC; the other used to pop out and if if those two made it, some third would clear its strong disagreement with the place where it was fitted!! We simulated the project, everything worked well.....but the breadboard wouldn't allow us to materialise it in reality. We couldn't get it replaced either...(We are always short of apparatus,aren't we? :|).Three weeks passed,day of submission came yet the breadboard had shown us the courtesy only to make individual circuits work properly.It was a do or die situation...that breadboard had given us a scare!!! We made up our mind...reached some concrete conclusions. Half of us started working vigorously on the project while others engaged themselves more fiercely(Obviously...i was here!! :)) in convincing madam that the only fault in this project was the breadboard! At last we had some success......the breadboard showed some output!(Bravo for people who did it!!!) Only thing this time it showed an output of 12 no mater what the digital input was. We were forced to do following thnigs :-
1. Convince madam that our project had worked successfully dispite of a bouncy breadboard.
2.Proof the previous sentence by showing her an output of 12*1=12, 3*4=12 and 6*2=12!!!
Phew! A big relief it was.....
I have went through all this trouble to let you know only one thing.....even if your project doesn't work work well...don't worry....your breadboard is faulty...not your thinking! :) You are just another victim of the bouncy breadboard hypothesis!! :P
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