Electric circuits

1. Design mode – This is for making your circuit. Make sure the mode toggle (top right) is set to Design mode.

• Drag and drop components from the right panel onto the left panel.
• Components will automatically snap in place either horizontally or vertically between any two dots on the circuit grid, the position it drops to will be highlighted.
• Selecting and dragging a component already on the grid will move it.
• Moving it to the location of another component will swap their places.
• Dropping it off to the side of the grid, or in any of the holes in the grid will delete it.
• Holding Ctrl whilst dragging an item already on the grid will make a copy of it, particularly useful for wires.
• Components on the Setup panel that have a brighter blue background have adjustable settings. To access the settings, right click on the component once it has been placed.
• Rather than building from scratch, you may want to select one of the pre-made circuits from the drop-down menu.
• Click the dustbin icon to quickly delete all components.
• Entering run mode will automatically remove any orphaned components that are not connected at both ends as part of a complete circuit.

2. Run mode – This is for running your circuit. Make sure the mode toggle (top right) is set to Run mode.

• Values such as current of ammeters, and potential difference of voltmeters will be displayed on the circuit.
• Toggle component labels on or off – this can be useful if you want to ask students questions about specific components.
• Component Inspector – when toggle on, hovering the mouse cursor over any component will give a readout of its resistance, potential difference and current.
• Teaching mode – when toggled on, the outputs of all meters will be hidden, and can be individually toggled by clicking on each meter. This can be useful for setting problems for the students.
• Breakable lamps – when toggled on, lamps will break when the potential difference across them exceeds their voltage rating by more than 1 V. This creates a break in the circuit.
• Thermistors and LDRs – to change the temperature or light intensity, drag a heat or light source from the setup panel onto the circuit grid. The closer it is to the component, the higher the intensity and the lower the resistance of the component. Note: due to a bug I can't fix, they only work properly if you drop them on the circuit first and then move them towards the component.
• Overall resistance – the overall resistance of the circuit is displayed below the toggles in the setup panel.
• Zoom – you can zoom in on the circuit using the zoom slider above the circuit grid.