Pull-up and Pull-down resistors
A resistor is a passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. In electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow and adjust signal levels among other uses. Resistance is measured in Ohm with a sign of Ω.
A microcontroller (e.g. Arduino) utilizes I/O signals for communication with external hardware devices, where the most commonly known being GPIO. As a reminder, digital logic circuits have three logic states: high, low and floating (or high impedance). When there’s nothing connected to your GPIO pins, your program will read a floating impedance state, which we do not want. To achieve either high or low states, we’ll have to implement pull-up or pull-down resistors in our digital circuit.