I understand that part of it is for structural support, but what else is it for?
In: Technology
Solder connects everything together and completes a circuit.
We need a way to reliably connect the legs of a component to those of another component, or two the trace on a circuit board. This has to both physically holy the two together and stop them wiggling apart, and it also has to provide a conductive bridge so that the electricity can flow from one into another.
Solder is a metal that has a fairly low melting point, so we can melt it into a liquid and let it flow between two components, when it then cold down and hardens it will both physically hold the parts together (like mortar holding bricks), and also electrically, so electricity can flow from one to the other.
If you experiment with electronics, you can use things like protoboard to ‘wire’ components together, connect things together with crocodile clips, leads and many other solutions, but these solutions are all generally pretty temporary – they will work, but are fairly unrealities and won’t stand up to getting knocked or shaken about.
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