Course Mechanics:

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Textbook: Hayes and Horowitz: Student Manual for the Art of Electronics. We'll try to have a copy of the hardcover parent book (Horowitz and Hill: The Art of Electronics) in the lab room for your use. An on-line resource that might interest you is http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~vsanni/ph5/   .

Lab Notebook: Go out and acquire a fixed-page (not looseleaf) notebook. You'll find it easiest to use if the pages are basically simple graph paper. In this book you will record all of your observations. This includes drawings of your circuits and sketches of your scope displays. All circuit components and scope scales will be labeled; the numerical values must be in there, so that you can tell me precisely and exactly what happened. You will include written descriptions of what you've done, so clear that anyone else could replicate your work. You ought to be jotting down your own doubts and questions and insights.

Lab Checkout: After every lab, you and your partner will describe to me what you've done, showing me where this is recorded in your lab notebooks. You'll explain what the lab was all about, and answer questions, including speculative ones like, "How would you get this particular effect?" You're not ready for checkout if you can't do this.

Tests: There will probably be a midterm and a final, the latter coming after you've presented your final project.

Project: Everyone will design and build a project. This project must be substantial (involving fairly sophisticated electronics design). You ought to see this as an opportunity to be creative and to make something practical or satisfyingly whimsical. We'll talk more, later, about the criteria for a good project. Your project must be approved by the end of the second week.