The breadboard provides a very convenient means for connecting components with wire leads (resistors, LEDs, transistors, etc.) together to form circuits. However, many of the projects we will build this semester involve motors, and the connecting tabs on the motor won't plug into the breadboard. Besides, these projects involve mechanically connecting the motor to various mechanical components and moving the resulting assembly around. Having it directly attached to the breadboard would be inconvenient, to say the least. So, we need a way of electrically connecting motors (and things attached to motors) to other electrical components on the breadboard.
What we will use is various cables with the motor, LED, or whatever on one end and a miniature stereo phone plug on the other. This is the same kind of connector found on protable headsets. It has three conductors labeled tip, ring, and sleeve.
The sleeves of all three jacks are tied together and connected to ground. The tip and ring of each jack is brought to the interface connector socket strip (P10) from which it may be wired into your circuit. The tip is labeled "left" and the ring "right" in the table in the Lab Station Handbook.
The other end of the patch cord has a 3-pin rectangular connector on it.
Various pieces of apparatus we will use (e.g. motors) have mating 3-pin plugs attached to them, or you can plug things like LEDs or phototransistors directly into the connector.
