When we talk about electronics it is sometimes easier to use a picture to describe what we are talking about. Those pictures are called a schematic. A schematic is a picture representation of what we are talking about in electronics. They may look hard to read at first, but in time you'll find that they are usually easy to read. The hard part tends to be finding the parts that are represented in the drawing.

Lets look at a simple schematic, and learn to read what it says.

Above is a schematic of a battery hooked up to a light bulb. Here is what it looks like in real life.

We have used a standard Duracell 9V battery and a light bulb. Notice that the light bulb is on. Now we are going to hook up the light bulb the opposite way.

Notice that in the first picture the green wire went to the top area of the light bulb, and in the second picture the black wire went to the top area of the bulb. That is the only change.

See that the light is still on? That is because light bulbs do not care about which side of the battery they are connected to. Some devices do care. When that is the case, the schematic will indicate which way to hook the device up. We'll talk more about that later.