Physics 440 – Electronics – Fall 2015

Web Site: http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2015fall/PHY440/

The aim of this course is to give students a practical introduction to modern electronic circuits. It consists of two weekly lectures where the theory and principles of electronic circuits will be discussed, and a three hour lab where students will get some hands-on experience with electronic circuits and a variety of instrumentation such as oscilloscopes, pulsers, power supplies and digital multimeters. The topics covered in the course will start with simple DC circuits and end in computer design of programmable logic devices (PLD's). In between we will study AC circuits, filters, diodes, bipolar transistors, FET's, operational amplifiers and a variety of digital circuits. Where possible we will make use of computer programs such as LabView and software from the Xilinx corporation to program field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA's).

SIRS

Please remember to fill out the SIRS form for this course.

Instructors

· Pengpeng Zhang, Professor, 4213BPS, 884-5630, zhang@pa.msu.edu

· Charles Loelius, TA, cloelius1@gmail.edu

· Walter Buhro, TA, buhro@nscl.msu.edu

Weekly schedule

· Lectures: Tu Th 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM, 1420BPS

· Labs: Room 1254 BPS Labs start in week 3!
Section 1: Tuesday 11:30am - 2:20pm (TA: Walter Buhro)
Section 2: Tuesday 3pm - 5:50pm (TA: Charles Loelius)
Section 3: Thursday 11:30am - 2:20pm (TA: Walter Buhro)
Section 4: Thursday 3pm - 5:50pm (TA: Charles Loelius)

· Zhang office hour: Thursdays 10am – 11am, 4213 BPS

· Buhro office hour: Tuesdays 10:30am – 11:30am, 1254 BPS

· Loelius office hour : Wednesdays 12pm – 1pm, 1254 BPS

Course Schedule

The schedule of lectures and labs is at http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2015fall/PHY440/schedule.html.

Textbooks

Required text:
Martin Plonus, Electronics and Communications for Scientists and Engineers, Harcourt/Academic Press, 2001, ISBN-10: 0-12-533084-7, ISBN-13: 978-0125330848. Corrections for typos in the book are here.
Suggested Reference:
P. Horowitz and W. Hill: The Art of Electronics, Second Ed., Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN-10: 0521370957, ISBN-13: 978-0521370950. This book is an excellent reference and students planning to continue with electronics in future years should consider acquiring it.
Optional Reference:
Nigel P. Cook: Electronics A Complete Course, Second Ed., Person Prentice Hall, 2004, ISBN-10: 0-13-111066-7, ISBN-13: 978-0131110663. This book is very detailed and easy to follow but doesn't cover all of the material.
A. J. Diefenderfer and B. E. Holton, Principles of Electronic Instrumentation, Third Ed., Thomson Brooks/Cole, 1994, ISBN-10: 0030747090, ISBN-13: 9780030747090. This book was previously used in this course, it is older but some of the descriptions/explanations are more detailed.

Clicker Questions

We will have clicker questions during the lecture. Remember to bring your i-Clicker to each lecture.

Homeworks and Quizzes

There will be weekly homework assignments, due at the beginning of class on Thursdays. Quizzes will be given during lecture; there will be roughly twelve quizzes throughout the semester. Calculators are required for the quizzes, therefore please bring a calculator to each lecture.

Laboratory Procedure and Notebook

The laboratory part of the course consists of a series of experiments that students will perform working alone. Students will need to purchase a lab notebook into which they will enter all relevant information associated with an experiment. The laboratory exercises will be performed during 2h 50min lab periods. The data entered into the notebook will be left with a laboratory instructor, for grading. No formal write up will be required, but students are cautioned to enter all relevant data and explanations clearly and succinctly so that the grader can easily follow the work done. No erasures or page removal is allowed. (This follows standards for maintaining lab notebooks within research practice.) If an error is made, it should be neatly crossed out and the corrected data re-entered. In general, there are no make-up labs (rare exceptions can be made with advance notice).
More laboratory procedure tips.

Tier II Writing Requirement

Because this course can partially fulfill the Tier II Writing requirement for physics majors, there will be one graded short research paper, written as a journal article, which will be graded for style, grammar and form, as well as for content and presentation. The rough draft of this research paper will be due on Tuesday, December 1, and the final draft will be due on Thursday, December 10, which is the last day of the lecture. Your grade on the research paper will replace your lowest lab grade when calculating your final grade.

D2L

Your quiz, lab, homework, and research paper scores will be available on D2L. You can also submit comments and questions through D2L.

Grades

Your Total Score will be determined by the scores on the homework assignments, quizzes, and laboratory performance. The Total Score is weighted as follows: 20%-Homework, 30%-Quizzes, 50%-Laboratory. Grade assignments at the end of the term will be taken from the table below. (It may be shifted slightly in your favor.)