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Even low power components can do things that could hurt you if you do something wrong with them.

When I was first playing around with electronics as a kid using kits and individual components purchased from Radio Shack I once put an LED directly across the terminals of a lantern battery.

The LED exploded sending little bits of plastic flying off at high speed. They all missed me, but if I had been in a little different position when hooking up that LED my lesson in the importance of using current limiting resistors with LEDs could have been punctuated by a serious eye injury.

I'd say that a paragraph when each component is introduced covering what bad things that component can do if you exceed its voltage, current, or power limits would be a good idea even if the course is only dealing with low power systems.




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