On Monday, my father and I went on a little father-and-son expedition to 
the outer reaches of his loft. We found some really far-out stuff up 
there. Most of it was to do with electronics, although I also found a 
gas cylinder marked "CO2", and a small bottle of white powder marked 
"KNO3"...

Some capacitors are small brown things like little chocolate buttons. 
(But significantly less tasty.) Then there's the "electrolytic" ones, 
which are small blue things that look like they belong in a licorish 
all-sorts bag. Some a really small (about 5mm diammeter). Some are a bit 
bigger (15 mm diammeter).

When I was in my dad's loft, I found capacitors the size of friggin' 
soda cans! o_O WTF are *those* for??

(I mean, are they that size because they have a higher capacitance or 
something? I gather a capacitor is one of the few components where the 
physical size of the device determines its electronical characteristics...)

Also, most transformers are small square lumps about the size of your 
thumb. (Then again, you use them on 5V electrics.) I saw a transformer 
up there that was about 15cm along all three edges. Presumably in this 
case the size is to allow it to handle higher current without melting.

And then there were the transistors. Normal transistors are tiny black 
plastic cylinders with long legs. Occasionally you'll see a transistor 
that's metal and slightly fatter. But my dad showed me some transistors 
which were about 4cm across, bolted to a heat sink the size of my car's 
radiator. Apparently these are "power transistors". o_O

We also found a box containing more 14-pin DIL sockets then it is 
humanly normal to have. And a bunch of 7400-series chips. In particular, 
these are the original, obsolete, 7400 chips. 7400, 7408, 7402, etc. Not 
74LS00 or even 74S00, but vanilla 7400 TTL. They're that old.

We also found a stack of unopened boxes containing LEDs. Now when I was 
at Maplin I bought a bag of mixed LEDs - which is great, because you get 
a lot of LEDs for not much money, but OTOH they're all different. Now I 
have a matching set!

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