ME233 is a design-first approach to learning electronics. You'll use professional components and portable instrumentation to build and debug circuits of your own design. The course begins with opamps, passive components, filters and amplifiers. We'll use transistors in switching and linear modes, and conclude with a section on digital logic circuits. You'll gain the confidence to work from manufacturers’ datasheets, and emerge with a practical competence in electronics that is essential in every technical field.
Practical orientation. We use standard professional components. Students learn they can navigate and work from manufacturers’ datasheets online, despite an excess of information and frequent ambiguity.
Design every day. The confidence to design circuits comes from successfully designing circuits, not from analyzing circuits. Students design, build, and debug their circuits every day – in class with the help of the instructor, and as homework with classmates in the evening. Even on tests, since tests unavoidably define what is important in a course.
Partitioning and diagnosis. Your circuits won't work. Sorry! Mine don't work either. Electronics is a great venue to practice an essential engineering skill, which is to design by parts, build and test by parts, diagnose what is or isn't working by parts.
Approximation methods. Both reading circuits and designing them requires the development of a physical intuition for electronics. Overreliance on precise numerical or analytical methods can be a hindrance. We model, allow, and reward approximation, and use rough and ready impedance considerations to keep design simple.
Portable inexpensive equipment. Scheduled lab sections do not provide a conducive atmosphere for experimentation, debugging, or creativity. Portable equipment makes it possible to build circuits in class and at home. Further, consistent with the message that electronics is a basic engineering skill, students should be able to keep their equipment at the end of the course.
Scalability. We teach Electronics Design in sections of up to 50 students, which still allows daily in-class interaction between each student and the instructor and TA. The classroom becomes a lab, with lecture interspersed with hands-on practice.