What's a current sink ?

"hihihi" a écrit dans le message news:

He he he... It's a current ecruos.

Fred.

A "current sink" might be a load into which current is routed, like a high wattage, low ohms resistor.

A component is either the source for current or drains away current. For example, if you have two transistors stacked to drive an output from the connection between them, the top transistor may be hooked to +5v while the bottom transistor is hooked to ground. The top transistor is source while the bottom one is sink.

The water analogy might help....

Current (or water) flows OUT of a SOURCE Current (or water) flows INTO a SINK

A "sink hole" is a potholing and geology term for a stream or river that suddenly goes underground.

You may also see in data sheets that an output can "sink" a certain amount of current. This usually means that when it's at a logic 0, that much current can be allowed to flow _into_ the output pin. For example if you connect a Resistor between an output (at logic 0) and the 5V rail, then current will flow as follows....

From the power supply through the 5V rail down through the resistor _into_ the output pin out of the 0V pin on the the device back to the power supply.

If the output changes to logic 1 (5V) then no current flows through the resistor because both sides are at same voltage.

He might be talking about one of those "new kitchen sinks" or

Like in terms of a microchip, where the specs say that E.G. it can sink so much current and source so much current?

Source being: how much current it can supply? and Sink being: how much current it can handle into it?

If it can source say 25 mA then it could let's say run an LED or 2? or something like that?