Gabriel Sechan wrote:
On a side note- I really don't like how analog is taught entirely.
Digital I grasped pretty much immediately- I understood boolean logic.
I could sit down and design a simple processor today, if I needed to.
But despite being able to find the voltage and current of any LRC
circuit by 3 methods, I'm damned if I know how to actually design a
circuit that does anything with those components. If I had been taught
how to *use* them to design useful stuff earlier, I would have been more
inclined to try harder at analog.
Well, that is normally the province of the Electronics I course where
you go through all the various basic amplifiers. However, you are not
alone.
When I was at UT-Austin, Doug Holberg taught an analog CMOS VLSI class
at the graduate level. Doug is a great teacher; he, along with Philip
Allen, wrote the first real reference on analog CMOS VLSI design. I
just audited the class because I couldn't officially fit it into my
schedule. Most of the students were graduate level semiconductors
students; these are *really* bright folks.
The first exam crushed most of the class.
Basic small-signal analysis was simply beyond most of the students. I
was appalled. This is Electronics I even at the University of
Pittsburgh, my alma mater.
Electronics I is actually kind of a fun course if you have a lab to go
with it. Creating a real audio amp from a single transistor and a small
number of discrete components is actually cool. You also tend to get
good at nasal debugging.
Electronics I was where I *finally* started to understand some of the
circuits I built as a kid from the old 250-in-1 Radio Shack kits.
What's remarkable is that it takes a *LOT* of EE before you can actually
understand everything in those kits. Oscillators require a good dose of
feedback theory before you actually understand them and that is an upper
level course.
-a
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