Electronics

Computers can be connected, or networked, to one another through cable or wireless technologies, enabling communications and data and resource sharing. A network can be limited to a single building, or spread across the entire globe. Local Area Network (LAN) A local area network (LAN) is a group of computers …

The word laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Laser light is different from other forms of light because light produced by a laser is in phase. To understand what it means for light to be in phase, look at the following figure. Figure. Visible …

Flip-flops are a rather unique digital device based upon the operation of combined logic gates. Flip-flops are an essential part of digital electronics. They are at the very heart of counters, timers, sequencing devices, and memories. Flip-flops are semiconductor devices that are capable of assuming one of two stable states. …

Digital circuits are used for many reasons. For example, digital circuits convert ac sine waves to digital pulses, Figure 1. The ac signal is sampled. Various points are given digital values. These are later converted to a binary value. Figure 1. An ac signal being converted to digital pulses. Figure …

The vacuum tube is a direct result of Thomas Edison’s experiment with the incandescent lamp. In this experiment, a metal plate was placed in the vacuum bulb containing the filament. A battery and series meter were connected between the light filament and the plate. At this point, Edison discovered that …

A simple section of n- or p-type material is not particularly useful for the construction of electronic circuits. However, when sections of n- and p-type material are brought in contact to form a PN junction, a diode is formed. Diodes have a number of interesting and useful properties that are due entirely to the nature of the PN …

Practical op-amps are not ideal but exhibit limitations that should be considered in the design of instrumentation. In particular, in dealing with relatively large voltages and currents, and in the presence of high-frequency signals, it is important to be aware of the non-ideal properties of the op-amp. Figure a: Operational …

An operational amplifier (op-amp) is an integrated circuit (IC) that contains a large number of microscopic electrical and electronic components integrated on a single silicon wafer. An op-amp can be used in conjunction with other common components to create circuits that perform amplification and filtering, as well as mathematical operations, such as addition, subtraction, …

Figure 1 depicts the circuit symbol and the construction of a typical n-channel enhancement-mode MOSFET. The device has four regions: the gate, the drain, the source, and the bulk. Each of these regions has its own conducting terminal. The bulk and source terminals are often electrically connected, in which case the bulk terminal is not shown in the …

A Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) is formed by joining three sections of alternating p- and n-type material. An NPN transistor is a BJT with a thin, lightly doped p-type base region sandwiched between a heavily doped n-type emitter region and a large, lightly doped n-type collector region. The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) counterpart to the NPN is the PNP transistor, which utilizes the same doping scheme …

Optical Fiber is a length of ultra-pure glass or plastic that provides a closed pathway for transmitting light between two points. Glass optical fibers are by far the most commonly used, so we will assume that the optical fibers in all our discussions are made of glass. Optical Fiber: A …

Photoelectric devices typically contain solid-state output switches. A solid-state switch has no moving parts (contacts). A solid-state switch uses a triac, SCR, NPN (current sink) transistor, or PNP (current source) transistor output to perform the switching function. See Figure 1. The triac output is used for switching AC loads. The …