Lab 2.2 - Differentiator 

This lab is designed to teach me about an RC Differentiator Circuit.

This circuit creates a pulse on a changing waveform (both rising AND falling). My calculus was rusty, but I found the animated graph on this derivatives page to be very helpful.

If you load down the output this circuit will start to fail, but external buffering can address that (later in text).

100 KHZ Square wave

Blue is Input, Yellow is output

Trying to view pulses on my analog scope
 when I increased the volts per div the line got fuzzy :(

Settings on analog scope, alt seemed to work better then chop

My lab notes, note: when I first tried this experiment in 2011 with my USB scope I couldn't see anything at all

Lab 2.1 - RC Circuit 

This lab is designed to teach me about Capacitors and the RC time factor:

• An RC time constant is defined as:
• the TIME required to charge (or discharge) a capacitor, through a resistor to 63 % of goal.
• a capacitor fully charge/discharges over 5 rc time constants: 63% at a time.
• in just 2.2 time constants you are 90%  there (63% to goal + 63% to goal + 12.6% to goal)

I aligned the trace so that it stretched from the 100% to 0% markers on my scope's screen. In order to do this I had to move the Horizontal time base 'cal' knob. I also used the time delay function to align the slope on the edge of the screen for maximum viewing 

 The very simple circuit as built. Of course I got excited and managed to use the wrong value of capacitor, but I finally realized my mistake and replaced my .001uf with a .01uf

Lab notes.

Welcome to my blog

This blog is going to contain my progress, status, failures and notes as I proceed through the workbook "Student Manual for The Art of Electronics".










It is a workbook designed to help students understand the book "The Art of Electronics" by performing various lab tests. The Art of Electronics is often hailed as THE authority on electronics. As someone who has reached an intermediate (or maybe advanced beginner) I believe it is time for me to (once again) attempt to master this massive (1000+ page) tome of greatness.