In this tutorial, you'll learn about some basic electronic circuits and how to connect them to the Arduino board.
[photo of breadboard]
This is a breadboard, sometimes known as a solderless breadboard. It has lots of holes that you can stick wires or electronic components into, and which are connected inside the breadboard. This lets you create a circuit containing multiple components without having to physically attach them to each other.
[diagram of the connected holes of a breadboard]
Let's wire up our first circuit: one that lights up an LED. We're going to use the Arduino board to supply power, but any other 5V power source would work just as well (i.e. we're not using the microcontroller on the Arduino).