Why isn’t the D2 LED ON when the transistor is ON

bjtledtransistors

I attached to this question a circuit that I can't seem to understand. In the lecture I watched, we use the transistor (in saturated mode) as a switch to kind of get a positive and negative output depending on whether or not we forward bias the base-emitter junction. When the transistor is off, only the D2 LED is on, which is fairly easy to understand. However, when we forward bias the base-emitter junction, D2 appears to have been completely switched off and this time only D1 emits light. I'm guessing it might have something to do with not enough current being pulled into D2 but I might be completely off the mark.

Thank you!

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Best Answer

LED D2 is green and it needs about about 2.0V to light up. LED D1 is red and it needs about 1.6V to light up.

And when the transistor is turned on, it has a Vce drop of about 0.2V.

Adding the voltage drops of the transistor and red LED D1, that is still less than what green LED D2 needs to work, so there is not enough voltage over green LED D2 to turn on.