What is a Rectifier? (AC to DC): Electronics Basics 7

if you are relatively new to electronics don't freak out just yet this circuit might look a bit crazy but I promise you it is simpler than it looks what you are looking at here is basically a rectifier so what is a rectifier what does he do well if I slow down time here just a little bit a rectifier will turn an AC power source as you can see here with a back-and-forth motion of electrons into a DC power source where if you look here the electrons are moving forward in one direction only through the LEDs in only one direction and that is due to the magical wonders of diodes this is one of the most useful ways of using diodes in any circuit and you'll find them in pretty much every single circuit you look at an especially power supplies because power supplies like the transformer where you plug into the AC socket that is what is responsible for turning alternating current into direct current to power your devices so if we look at the circuit here I've basically got an AC power supply so it's running at 240 volts AC at 60 Hertz or pulsing back and forth 60 times a second and I'm running it through a resistor not something you would normally do but for the sake of simplicity I'm using the resistor to reduce the current just enough to power these LEDs the only thing turning this alternating current into direct current are these four diodes now if you look at the way that they are arranged you might be able to see what's happening here so here we are I've actually slowed it down into super super slow motion so that you can actually see the operation because a diode will only allow current to flow in one direction means I can basically make the alternating current flow through all of these diodes in a way that when the electrons actually flow out to the rest of the circuit they're always flowing in one direction but you can see they they are not alternating back and forth they are simply going straight forward in one direction with very small pauses as the ac supply hits zero on the wave and so that means I can power these LEDs because if they were actually being powered from alternating current these LEDs would be flashing and would look absolutely horrendous now the easiest way to see how this is working is by following the flow of electrons so I'm gonna slow this down even more so we can follow the electrons even easier we can actually follow the electrons on each part of the wave to see what's happening as the electrons are now about to move the other way watch what happens here we go the electrons will start moving this way and it won't pass through this diode because this diode is in the direction which will not allow current to flow so instead the current now flows through here and through this diode pushing all the electrons up here and as the current starts to change now you can see that it's flowing through this diode and again going up in this direction so that means on each half of the AC wave the electrons are being pushed in that one direction because only one diode here will allow current to flow on each alternating wave and the same happens on the returning end as well so we've followed it from this side and there are another two diodes to obviously complete the circuit which means that when current flows backwards this way it all the way up here round to the LEDs through the LEDs and back through this diode and back to the AC power supply and when the current starts to flip the other way you can see it goes in this direction all the way up here through the LEDs and returns to the AC power supply in this direction so in effect that really useful property of diodes that allows current to flow in only one direction means that we can place the diodes in a particular way that alternating current can be changed into direct current to power devices which can only run or run more efficiently on direct current and so this is actually a very simplified version of what you would find in in pretty much any power supply that converts alternating current from your home electrical supply to direct current to power your devices

Channel: Simply Electronics

Views: 547,956

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Keywords: electronics, basics, current, electric, electron, flow, tutorial, how, to, energy, hobby, multimeter, power, circuit, volts, amps, watts, solder, iron, soldering, simple, simply, rectify, games, tron, ac, dc, ac to dc, converter, inverter, change, transform, direction, alternating, direct, bigclive, big clive, bigclivedotcom, diy, electronics (field of study), arduino, pi, raspberry, linux, automation, home, android, how rectifiers work, how do rectifiers work, work, everycircuit, every circuit, half wave, full wave, bridge

Id: 5cbQNfO0Mwg

Length: 5min 35sec (335 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2016