Collin Cunningham has a way with breaking down components to the basics and makes understanding them abundantly easy. He’s like the science teacher I always wished I had. In this Collin’s Lab video, he gives a comprehensive overview of the humble switch, demonstrating switches of the toggle, DIP, slide, rocker, rotary, and momentary variety, and explains the difference between SPST and DPDT switches in the process.

Here’s his original intro:

Easily overlooked, but elemental to electronics hardware, the manually operated switch is the simplest of electromechanical devices — and likely the most familiar. While the most basic switch is… well, quite basic, there’s a crazy-huge variety of switch types and sizes available to the electronics maker nowadays. Those new to the soldering and schematics scene will surely benefit from an introduction to some of the terms and formats relevant to various switch species.

Collin’s video is perfect for folks just getting started, and would even be a great resource for teachers: