An LED is
not a lightbulb.

And that distinction is where
real curiosity begins.

Light flows one way through an LED.
Flip it around and it stays dark —
that's not a broken part, that's the lesson.

An LED wants only ~2 volts and a few milliamps.
A 330 ohm resistor keeps it
from eating its whole battery and burning out.

"Every smart device you've ever held
started as this exact problem."

Learn to light one LED on a breadboard,
and you've learned to read every device in the room.