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 selected topics, such as batteries, motors, or computers. 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).
Please remember to fill out the SIRS form for this course.
The lab consultation is held in PHY 440 Lab at three specific times beside the regular lab sessions so you may come in to get acquainted/practice the instruments and ask questions. It is open to all sessions.
The schedule of lectures and labs is at http://web.pa.msu.edu/courses/2017fall/PHY440/schedule.html.
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.
We will have clicker questions during the lecture. Remember to bring your i-Clicker to each lecture.
There will be weekly quizzes on Thursdays. Quizzes will be given during lecture; there will be roughly thirteen quizzes throughout the semester. Calculators are required for the quizzes, therefore please bring a calculator to each lecture.
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.
The lab notebook should be a soft-sided 9"x12" 'Computation Notebook', which is available from University Stores in the Angell Building at 166 Service Rd., Room 101 (item number 14042680), or from the Spartan Bookstore (with slightly higher price).
Because this course can partially fulfill the Tier II Writing requirement for physics majors, there will be two wrting assignments (paragraphs) in the semester on "Capacitor" and "Diode".
Your lab scores will be available on D2L.
Course grades will be based on performance weighted as follows:
Lab 50%, Quizzes 23%, Final exam 13%, Clicker score 7%, Paragraphs 7%.