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Characteristic of diodes (and other parts)

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howardh

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I'm trying to figure out what certain characteristics of parts mean and how it affects how they work.
For example, I know resistors have a certain resistance which limits the flow of current and a tolerance, which says how far off from the actual resistance the resistor might be; and capacitors are characterized by their capacitance (I would like to know what this means exactly, but I haven't really tried looking this one up yet. It would still be nice to have this answered.) and breakdown voltage.
What has alluded me are the characteristics that are measured in amps. I understand that diodes are characterized by their breakdown voltage and the amount of current that can pass through them, but what happens if more/less current tries passing through them?
I'm reading up on collector current right now on Wikipedia, but it looks rather confusing at the moment, so I thought I might as well ask this too. Could someone explain (or link me to a source) in simple terms what the collector current and current gain is, and what it means when transistors are listed with hFE@Ic? Does that mean that the two are proportional to each other? How do these two properties affect the way they work?

The question in bold is the main question of this thread (the one whose answer I spent hours looking for but couldn't find). The rest are just there in hopes of getting a quick answer here so that I wouldn't have to spend as long looking for them.
 
If you put too much current through something, you will let the smoke out. It is a good idea to put less than the rated current through.
 
A diode has a "characteristic voltage drop" according to the type of diode. It can be as low as 0.2v or as high a 0.7v. Generally this voltage is considered to be constant for the type of diode but in actual fact the voltage-drop increases slightly as the current increases. There are hundreds of examples, depending on the type of diode and the current it is designed to pass (without getting too hot) so a specific example cannot be given. But, for instance, a normal 1 amp diode will drop about 0.6v at 500mA and this voltage will rise to 1.1v at 1 amp. In other words, the voltage at the anode will be 10v and the voltage at the cathode will be 8.9v when passing 1 amp.
 
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