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I want to start using the GPIO pins but I am worried about short circuits or using too much amperage and frying my raspi. What are the Min/Max Voltage and Current values rasppi can handle? What is the typical voltage and current? How sensitive is raspi to short circuits and things like that?

I have seen boards that are designed to 'protect' your raspi:

I don't really want to 'extend' the usefulness of my raspi I just want to protect it from getting fried by my GPIO pins. I'm intending on making a buffer circuit that will prevent my raspi from getting damaged from experimenting with the GPIO pins.

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You will get a lot of wild speculation amongst the replies. While data on the pi's gpio's is limited, most modern ICs will tolerate temporary shorts between a driven output and ground, the supply rail powering it, or another output. What they often will not tolerate is even brief connection to a higher voltage supply, such as a 5v pin on the same connector. – Chris Stratton Oct 16 '12 at 4:20
To be safe, use a breakout board. If you don't want to buy one then it's trivial to create your own protection circuit – Jivings♦ Oct 16 '12 at 6:59
Provided you aren't using extremely high speed protocols, just using 1K series resistors may be a good balance of protection and simplicity; any jury-rigged solution (especially if it has active devices requiring power) runs the risk of introducing additional places for accidental shorts... – Chris Stratton Oct 16 '12 at 16:08

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You can refer this link http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals . this would help you.

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