Paul A Nakroshis | Associate Professor & Chair | Dept of Physics Portland, Maine
Principles of Electronics: Physics 251
Syllabus
Phy251Syllabus.pdf
Textbook
The Art of Electronics, 3rd Ed., Horowitz and Hill
Overview of this Course:
An introduction to electronics including DC and AC circuits, transistors, operational amplifiers, and (possibly) combinatorial and sequential logic devices. The laboratory will cover the use of electronic instrumentation as well as illustrate principles. This semester, if a majority is interested, we will add some material to allow you to pass at least your FCC Technician exam for an amateur radio license.
Prerequisite(s): MAT 152 or equivalent, or permission of instructor
Credits: 3
21 Jan:
Introduction; how to “read” H&H, Resistors in series & parallel, power, voltage dividers, potentiometers. Introduction to amateur radio: band structure (frequency and wavelength). Downloads:
1. Resistor Color code Chart
2. HW 01
3. Lab1: Basic Measurements I
4. ARRL Amateur Radio Bands
23 Jan:
More about voltage dividers, Thevenin’s Theorem, maximizing power to the load, how to multiply 5 times 25.
Read 1.2.4, 1.2.5
28 Jan
No Lecture; work together on Lab 1 and finish HW.
30 Jan
Thevenin examples, Sinusoidal signals, the decibel scale, and capacitance,
4 Feb
More on the decibel scale (dBm definition), charging and discharging capacitors, Inductors, Reactance and Impedance. Start Lab II.
6 Feb
Finish Lab II
11 Feb
More on Lab 2
13 Feb
Snow Day
18 Feb
Discussed reversed diode measurement pitfalls
Derived response of RC Low Pass Filter
Mathematica Notebook here
PDF version of Mathematica Notebook
20 Feb
Discuss RC High Pass Filters
Finish Lab 2; start Lab 3
Making Classy Plots in Mathematica
Drawing Circuits: draw.io
Simple plotting: Gnuplot
Low Pass Filter JupyterTemplate
Writing lab reports is easy in a jupyter notebook or a Mathematica Notebook,
Obtaining Mathematica for your computer:
-Create an account (New users only):
-Go to user.wolfram.com and click "Create Account”
-Fill out form using a @maine.edu email, and click "Create Wolfram ID”
-Check your email and click the link to validate your Wolfram ID
Request the download and key:
Fill out this form to request an Activation Key
Click the "Product Summary page" link to access your license
Click "Get Downloads" and select "Download" next to your platform
Run the installer on your machine, and enter Activation Key at prompt
Due Dates
Lab 1: before 4pm 19 Feb 2025 at my office
Lab 2: Thursday 27 Feb 2025 in class
HW2: Tuesday 4 March at beginning of class
Lab 3: Thursday 6 Mar at beginning of class
Lab Handouts
Lab 1: Basic Measurements I
Lab 2: Basic Measurements II template.jl
Lab 3: Filters I : RC
Lab 4: Filters II: LC
Lab 5: Transistors I
Lab 6: Transistors II
Lab 7: Transistors III
Lab 8: Transistors IV
Lab 9: Operational Amplifiers I
Final Project: Audio Amplifier