Thursday, May 19, 2011

Objectives


1) Familiarize students with the concept of voltage, current and resistance and how to measure these quantities.

2) Understand the change of resistance for series and parallel connections.

3) Familiarize students with the use of a transistor as a voltage controlled switch.

4) Combine earlier concepts to make a circuit whose property depends on a sensor whose resistance changes with applied force/ ambient light.

Introduction

This project provides a peep into the world of “circuit design” – an essential part of the electrical engineering discipline. All the gadgets you see around you ranging from computers and cell-phones to automobiles and MRI scanners use some form of circuits for their operation. Today, there are broadly two levels of integration of circuits in electronic goods – first, different circuits are put into one tiny “chip” or “integrated circuit” (the Pentium processor in your laptop is an example); second, these chips are assembled on a board with other components to make a larger system (e.g. the motherboard of your computer). No matter what the level of integration, the fundamental principles remain the same. In this project, we shall introduce some of these basic principles and components that are essential for you to make a good circuit.