Syllabus[1]
for
Analog and
Digital Electronics Laboratory (PHYSCS 331)
Spring 2009
Section
One: Thursday, 3:45 – 6:45
PM
Section
Two: Friday, 9:00 AM – 12
noon
Department of Physics
The University of WI-Whitewater
Instructor:
Paul M. Rybski, Ph.D.
Office:
Upham 163 (472-5766) Laboratory: Upham 163A (472-3372)
Email:
rybskip@uww.edu
Office Hours – MTWR 9:00 – 11:00 AM
or by appointment
Course Co-requisites: PHYSCS
330
Texts
None: material to be supplied by instructor
Other Required Materials:
You
will need (1) a bound, laboratory notebook (otherwise
called a composition book), with or without graph rulings (your choice); (2) linear (5 div/inch), log/linear, log/log and polar
coordinate graph paper (could be the same as you use in Physics 330); (3) a scientific calculator, the satisfactory operation of which
is your responsibility (e.g., have the instruction book with you along with a
spare set of batteries); and (4) a set of drawing tools, including a ruler, a protractor, a
compass and a set of colored pencils.
Course Objectives
When
you leave this course, you should be able to analyze the function of (or design
your own) and construct working versions of
a. complex
circuits consisting of passive circuit elements (resistors, capacitors,
inductors);
b. simple
one- or multiple-transistor amplifiers using bipolar or field-effect
transistors;
c. simple
one- or multiple operational amplifier circuits for simple amplification or
complex signal-processing purposes;
As
you construct and debug these circuits, you will learn the function, correct
use of and problems with industry-standard test equipment, such as a high-speed
oscilloscope, digital volt meter and electrical waveform generator. Using this test equipment, you will
construct and debug conventional circuit modules designed from passive and
active circuit elements introduced in A/D Lecture (Physics 330).
Please
note that this course will not license
you to become electronic technicians, capable of servicing modern consumer
electronics. However, should you
so choose, after taking both this course and its lecture component, you could
enter and easily pass any license-granting electronics technician course for
analog electronics.
Course Design and Extra Credit
Learning
to design with electronic components takes time and experimentation. Each of
the required laboratory exercises you will complete as part of this course can
be finished within three hours.
Some of you will require more than three hours to complete some labs, so
I will open the lab on request for
those who need more than three hours.
Please read through the assigned laboratory before you start it so that
you can use your lab time efficiently.
The
fifteen lab periods this semester are just enough to cover a minimum number of
analog exercises for you to understand discrete components. Unfortunately, we do not have enough
regularly scheduled lab time to cover all of the analog labs you should have
experienced in a course such as this.
Since I believe strongly that all physics students should have the
broadest "in-lab" experience possible, you may choose to undertake a
limited number of extra credit experiments -- of my choosing or your design --
that expand on concepts already covered in a laboratory experiment you have
completed. Any extra credit labs
will have to be completed on your own time, and you will need to purchase your
own components if you wish to take your completed project with you at the end
of the course.
You
may use the extra credit so gained in one or both of two ways. First, you may use the grade received
on the extra credit lab to replace a lower grade on a regular lab. Or you may use the grades on the extra
credit labs to improve your overall average: each extra credit lab completed will count a maximum of 2.5
percentage points out of a maximum possible final average of 100%.
Course Philosophy
I am a
"mastery-oriented" instructor:
I want you to achieve the highest grade possible, and I will work with
you -- both inside and out of class -- to make this possible. Each of you bring to this class a
unique set of skills and deficiencies.
If left uncorrected, your deficiencies might determine your grade in
this class, a possibility both you and I must work to avoid. As important to me as your mastery of
the course material is your enjoyment of it; and you certainly will not enjoy
the course if you are having trouble
with it. So don't hesitate to ask questions during or after class: your problems are important to me! There is no such thing as a stupid
question; irrelevant, off-topic
questions, yes, but not stupid ones.
Those
of you who might be uncomfortable with asking a question in class should visit
me during my office hours or arrange for an appointment. My office hours are listed above. If you need to reach me by telephone,
you may call my office number (472-5766) any time. If I am not in, an answering machine will take your message
along with a telephone number at which I can reach you. Finally, you can send me a question via
Email (rybskip@uww.edu).
Attendance
Attendance at all laboratories is expected,
and attendance will be taken.
If you must miss a laboratory, please call me in advance and make
arrangements for your lab partner to share his or her notes with you. Work assigned in a given lab that you
miss will still be due on the assigned due date, unless you have an excused
absence. An excused absence is one for which you have been excused in
advance by the instructor and you
provide him with written documentation on your return of the University
activity that took you away from class or of the medical or family emergency it
represented. Any work assigned
in lab and not made up within a
period of time negotiated with me in advance after your excused absence will
not be accepted and will be recorded as a zero.
Attendance at announced examinations
is mandatory. Those with unexcused
absences will be given a zero grade for this portion of the
course. Those with excused
absences will be able to make up the missed test by appointment with
the instructor. Permission to
miss an examination must be obtained from the instructor prior to
examination.
University
policy adopted by Faculty Senate and the Whitewater Student Government states
that students will not be
academically penalized for missing class in order to participate in university-sanctioned
events. They will be provided an opportunity as
outlined above to make up any work that is missed. A university-sanctioned event is
defined as any intercollegiate athletic contest or other such event as
determined by the Provost.
Activity sponsors are responsible for obtaining the Provost's prior
approval of an event as being university-sanctioned and for providing the
Provost an official list of participants. Students are
responsible for notifying their instructors in advance of their
participation in such events.
Progress Evaluations
Two
implements will be used to evaluate your progress. The first will your journal write-ups of the results of your
experiments; the second, a
Mid-Term and a Final Examination.
Results of the Mid-Term
(March 19th) and Final
(3:15-5:15 PM Monday, May 18th) will each count toward 10% of your
grade; the experiments, 80%. Both the Mid-Term and Final will be
curved as required. Only the
average of all experiments will be curved. The highest curve I will draw is as follows: A = 90 - 100%; B = 80 - 89.5%; C = 70 - 79.5%; D = 60 - 69.5%; F < 59.5%. Any other curves will only improve your grade. Only whole grades will be used in
assessing your final grade for this course. Plus and minus grades will not be used.
Experiment Journals
The
University expects all students to gain substantial writing experience. In this lab, you will practice writing
about experiments: this is
preparation for writing scientific papers and technical reports in your later
employment. You will write your
reports as if you were explaining your experiment to physics colleagues who, by
following your descriptions, could do the experiment themselves and corroborate
your results. Writing is often more difficult than students realize because
explanations of your apparatus, procedure and results can easily be confusing
to other readers. A good reference
to follow is Kate Turabian's Students'
Guide for Writing College Papers
(University of Chicago Press).
You will also be preparing your reports as if they were legal documents
that could be used in a patent application or in a court of law. Special care must be used when
preparing experiment write-ups that will be subjected to legal scrutiny, and
those steps are outlined below.
The
following format should be followed in writing your reports for each experiment
you complete. The report should be
completed in careful hand-written form as you complete the experiment. Retyped data tables and printed graphs
may be appended to the final write-up.
Xerox copies of your write-ups, not
the lab books themselves, for the regularly scheduled laboratory are due one
week following the completion of the experiment. Xerox copies of your
write-ups, not the lab books
themselves, for the arranged lab time are due at the beginning of the next lab
period following the completion of the experiment. Note that you may submit improved word-processed versions of
the material already written in your laboratory notebook. If you choose to do this, you should
arrange to secure the word-processed material immediately following your
hand-written material. Note that
the notebook itself is a legal document:
write everything in non-eraseable pen and do not erase material written
in the book: cross it out and
initial the cross-out marks.
Title, Date, Your Name, the Name of your
Partner
Your
individual initiative and degree of cooperation with your partner will be
considered.
I. Statement of Purpose
State
in your own words the purpose of this experiment. Be complete but concise.
II. Diagram
and Description of Apparatus
This
diagram should reflect the essence of the experiment: how it works, not just how it looks. All wires should be labeled as to their
function (+ or -, signal or ground), all equipment boxes should be sketched as
realistically as possible. It
should be a physicist's diagram, not an artist's. When an electronic circuit must be drawn, use the
conventional symbols for components that you have learned in lecture. Provide a list of the equipment used,
including equipment type, manufacturer, model and serial number (where
available) to permit -- if desired -- a traceable calibration.
III. Procedure
Describe
how you planned to use the apparatus to get your information. A basic outline of the procedure will
be provided at the beginning of the laboratory period.
IV. Tables
of Data and Graphs
These
must be clearly captioned, easy to read (with units indicated) and accompanied
by explanatory comments where necessary.
V. Sample
Calculation(s)
Display
in detail at least one example of each type of calculation you performed.
VI. Analysis
and Critique
Discuss
the strengths and weaknesses of the experimental design and your
technique. Include a discussion of
sources of uncertainty. Explain
how well your final result was determined, both in terms of precision and
(where possible) accuracy. If you
identify an experimental problem, try to determine if your result is increased
or decreased by the problem.
Explain how you could change the experiment design to get better
results. Explain how you might
improve your measurement technique.
VII. Conclusion
Explain
what you found out in this experiment.
This can usually be said in a few brief sentences. For
example, "The time constant of the R-C network used in this experiment was
1.05 X 10-6 [seconds] ± 0.03 X
10-6 [seconds].Ó
B. Examinations
Both
examinations will have an in-class and out-of-class segment. Completed
on your own and on your honor, the out-of-class segment will be
"open-book" and "open-note"; and it must be completed before the "in-class"
segment is taken. In addition to
completing formal problems on the "in-class" segment, you will be
asked to construct and
"debug" any circuits that you designed in the "take-home"
segment. Some portions of the
"in-class" segment will be "open-book" and
"open-note". Further
information about the examinations will be provided when they are given.
Tentative[2]
Sequence of Laboratories (Monday =
Section 1/Wednesday = Section 2)
1. Jan.
29/31 Oscilloscope
Principles
2. Feb.
5/7 Electrical
Measurements with a CRO and a DVM, Part I
3. Feb.
12/14 Electrical
Measurements with a CRO and a DVM, Part II
4. Feb.
19/21 Steady-state
AC Response of RC Networks
5. Feb.
26/28 Behavior
of Non-ohmic Devices
6. Feb.
24 Non-ohmic
Devices in Power Supplies
7. Mar.
5/7 Bipolar
Transistors: Common Emitter
Amplifier, Part I
8. Mar.
12/14 Bipolar
Transistors: Common Emitter
Amplifier, Part II
Mar.
?? Mid-Term
Examination
9. Mar.
19/21 Bipolar
Transistors: Common Collector and
Common Base Amplifiers
10. Mar.
26/28 Spring
Break
11. April
2/4 Field-effect
Transistors: Common Source
Amplifier
12. April
9/11 Inverting
Operational Amplifier
13. April
16/18 Non-inverting
Operational Amplifier
14. April
23/25 Special
Applications with Op Amps, Part I
15. Ap.
20/May 1 Special Applications with
Op Amps, Part II
16. May
7/9 Special
Applications with Op Amps, Part III
May
16 Final
Examination, 3:15 PM – 5:15 PM
University Policy Statements
The
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is dedicated to a safe, supportive and
non-discriminatory learning environment.
It is the responsibility of all undergraduate and graduate students to
familiarize themselves with University policies regarding Special
Accommodations, Misconduct, Religious Beliefs Accommodation, Discrimination
and Absence due to University-sponsored Events. (For details, please refer to the Undergraduate
and Graduate Timetables;
the Rights and Responsibilities section of the Undergraduate
Bulletin; the Academic
Requirements and Policies and the Facilities and Services sections
of the Graduate Bulletin;
the Student Academic Disciplinary Procedures [UWS Chapter
14]; and the Student
Nonacademic Disciplinary Procedures [UWS Chapter 17].)