Mill Bypass Led resistor confusion

[WhenBoredomPeaks]

This one is from R.G. Keen:

The Millenium 2 circuit is an inverter, not a follower like the Millenium 1, so the LED must be in the drain circuit of the device, and there must be a current limiting resistor in series with it.

I "veroboarded" this schematics:

http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/Millenium/milckt3.gif

What happens here with the LED? I just can't imagine why the LED is not killed by the direct 9V connection.


(+ bonus question for you R. G.: Isn't it strange to answer questions about 10 year old publications? Doesnt it feels nostalgic or something?)

[R.G.]

What happens here with the LED? I just can't imagine why the LED is not killed by the direct 9V connection.

It lives because there is a resistor in series with it. It does not matter whether the LED is connected directly to 9V and has a resistor after it, as shown, or whether the resistor contacts 9V and the LED is after the resistor. The fact that one terminal of the LED touches 9V has no effect whatsoever since there is something in series to limit the current.

(+ bonus question for you R. G.: Isn't it strange to answer questions about 10 year old publications? Doesnt it feels nostalgic or something?)

Nah. I wish more people would read my older stuff. Quite a lot of what I post here is telling someone new where to read the questions I've already answered.

[WhenBoredomPeaks]

What happens here with the LED? I just can't imagine why the LED is not killed by the direct 9V connection.

It lives because there is a resistor in series with it. It does not matter whether the LED is connected directly to 9V and has a resistor after it, as shown, or whether the resistor contacts 9V and the LED is after the resistor. The fact that one terminal of the LED touches 9V has no effect whatsoever since there is something in series to limit the current.

(+ bonus question for you R. G.: Isn't it strange to answer questions about 10 year old publications? Doesn't it feels nostalgic or something?)

Nah. I wish more people would read my older stuff. Quite a lot of what I post here is telling someone new where to read the questions I've already answered.

Thanks for the answer!

Here's the source of my confusion:

I have quite childish ideas about the flow of electrons, here's what i thought about this circuit:

There is a lot of strong electron guys live in the battery. When i connect the LED, the strong guys go through the LED, kills it with their power and then they heading towards the resistor. Now the resistor kills like 70% of the bad guys (the electrons) but 30% still manages to survive the resistors attack and they can flow towards the drain of the FET.

So as you can see my main confusion came from the order of the LED and the limiting resistor.

[Pablo1234]

When I look at circuits i don't really think about flow to much. I look at it from the perspective of the component i want to study. In this case its the power wanting to get to ground through a resistor LED and transistor. But the power doesn't see them individually, it senses the sum of them and makes the judgment of whats going to happen.

[waltk]

Maybe you can think of it this way: The electron guys that live in the battery are closely packed in a single file line that extends from the positive battery terminal to the negative battery terminal, and the line goes through both the LED and the resistor.  Because the resistor fiendishly only allows the line to pass through it at a certain rate, the line is backed up to the LED and can't move through it any faster than the line is moving through the resistor. 

[bobp1339]

If you had a burst box, would the guys go thru there faster?  Or maybe just a box with a burst button...

yeah.. maybe I shouldn't have....