User manual

11
1.6 Transistors
Transistors are active components that are used in electronic applications to switch
and amplify current and voltage.
The bipolar transistors contained in the learning package have the type designa-
tions 2N 3904 and 2N 3906. These are complementary small-power transistors
that are suitable for a maximum operating voltage of 30 V and a current of up to
200 mA. Complementary means that they are a matching transistor pair of an NPN
and a PNP transistor. The designations »N« and »P« stand for the negative and
positive semi-conductor layers in the transistor. If you are not very familiar with
these terms yet, you will understand their functions from the practical experiments
later.
Fig. 007: Transistor connections.
E = Emitter, B = Basis, C = Collector