Single Semester Sample Syllabus
Physics 123/223: Introduction, Fall 2023 |
| March 5, 2024
What’s in This Handout
Contents
1 Course Format and Goals1.1 Course information and requirements The Fall 2024 version of 123/223 will teach the full course material contained in Learning the Art of Electronics. It will begin with the analog half of the book up to the midterm exam. We will complete the term with the chapters covering the digital material. There are no prerequisites but some programming experience will make the microcontroller portion of the course somewhat easier to digest. 1.2 About the course in general This course tries to teach you enough analog and digital electronics so that you can do useful design work in a laboratory. The course achieves this very broad coverage at the expense of depth. But that does not mean that your designs will be second-rate: the premise of Horowitz & Hill’s text is that a person need not go through the rigors of three or four terms at engineering school before designing useful circuits. At term’s end you will have seen a lot of standard analog and digital circuits, created a portion of a group project to transmit audio optically, constructed circuits inside programmable logic and will have programmed a tiny computer to control a variety of peripherals. You will be a novice, but a novice well-equipped to continue learning. Datasheets that now are opaque to you should, by term’s end, be intelligible. Lots of scary schematics will have ceased to scare you. We will meet twice each week. Most days we will devote the first part of the afternoon to a discussion of the current topics, which are defined in part by the lab exercises and in part by the reading. The small class size permits us to work in an informal seminar-like atmosphere. After the discussion, you will spend the remainder of the afternoon building circuits on our breadboards with the course staff available to help get things working (you can’t learn electronics without actually doing it). The course covers a lot of material and does take a lot of time. It has the reputation of being equivalent to 1.5 to 2 full courses. The work is so different from what you are asked to do in an ordinary Physics course, however, that you may find it restful: an afternoon of occupational therapy, spent pushing little wires into holes: building things–then finding out why they don’t work. (Ok, that last part may not be so restful.) Because we are covering both the analog and digital material in one semester, the pace will be somewhat faster than the separate analog and digital versions of the course. The emphasis is on practical design rather than theory. Until late in the course, each circuit that you build will require no more than perhaps 20 to 40 minutes to build and try. A few labs ask you to do more: the group project in which you build a wireless communication system with others in the class for example. In some cases we will ask you to design a circuit as part of the homework, then implement it in lab. Compared to a course like Engineering Sciences 154 (electronic devices and circuits), Physics 123/223 is both broader and shallower. We will not cover the theory in depth, but we will build many more circuits. At the start, we remind you of Ohm’s Law; by the end you are programming a microcontroller. This is a graded course. We don’t allow students to take it Pass/Fail and we don’t accept auditors. There are normally no additional requirements for students taking the course for Graduate credit; however, graduate students needing to show additional work for Graduate credit should contact the Instructor to discuss how to meet your department requirements. 2 A Rough Map of the Course Schedule2.1 A sketch of the course topics
Passive Circuits: DC, RC/RLC Circuits and Diode Circuits Discrete Bipolar Transistors: Simple Model, Emitter Follower, Common Emitter Amplifier Operational Amplifiers: Idealized Model, Departures from Ideal, Applications, Active Filters, Stability and Oscillators Misc Topics: Comparators and MOSFETs
Logic: Gates, Combinational Logic, Flip-flops, Sequential Logic, Counters and Programmable Logic Devices (FPGAs) Conversion: Analog⇔Digital Microcontroller: C code, Assembly Language, Programming Environments, Debugging, Peripheral devices, I/O interfacing, Parallel Buses, Serial Buses, RTOS 3 Staff3.1 LecturersDavid AbramsEmail:Telephone:Office:Office Hours: TBDI encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to meet with me, and I expect everyone to set up at least one initial office hour meeting with me during the first three weeks of the course to get acquainted. 3.2 Teaching Assistant(s):Teaching Assistants TBD Section/Extra Lab Time TBD3.3 Inclusion and BelongingWe strive to create a learning environment where every student belongs and feels welcome and valued. We need your help to accomplish this goal. If something is said by anyone (including the staff) in class or in a meeting that makes you uncomfortable, or if there is course material that feels insensitive (apologies in advance for the rose-colored lens cartoon), please talk to the instructor or TFs about it. If you prefer, piazza allows you to communicate with us anonymously. 4 Labs, Problem Sets, Quizzes & Exams4.1 ExamsA 90 minute midterm exam will cover the material in the first half of the course. A final exam will cover all course material. The final exam is scheduled by Harvard (date/time/location TBD). 4.2 Ungraded Quizzes (i.e., Warm Up Exercises)None that are graded—but often you can expect to be asked to try a task that does not count at all for a grade while watching the lecture/demonstration videos. The purpose of these short exercises is to give both you and the course staff an idea of what you understand and what you are confused about. 4.3 Reading AssignmentsThe Laboratory Manual for the course is over 1000 pages but we don’t expect you to read it all. We do expect you to read the day’s assigned classnotes and review the lab (the “N” and “L” portions of the chapter) before you come to class. You can read or ignore the other sections (explanations of particular topics and worked examples) if not specifically assigned, but you may find them helpful in preparing for the mid-term and final or understanding a confusing point or concept. We will list the notes and labs you have to read on the Daily Class/Lab Assignments page. Some parts of the notes will be skipped by design. For example, in order to cover both analog and digital in one course we are skipping chapters on advanced BJTs, voltage regulators, PID controllers, phase-locked loops. If you have a particular interest on a topic we are skipping, please speak with the course staff. 4.4 HomeworkWe will give out homework assignments, approximately one per week on Tuesday (often available digitally on Canvas on Monday evening). Homework are due before class Tuesday in the Homework drop box as you come into class. Optionally, we will accept an electronic submission with advance permission. We prefer homework in hard copy form on the actual homework assignment. (We find it harder to grade when just the answers are submitted on separate paper.) Extensions: We are generous with extensions, if you ask before the assignment is due. We are much grumpier when you offer an excuse after you’re late. Homework Late Without an Extension: We’ll keep some discretion, here. But our usual policy is to give a maximum of 50% of the points you would otherwise have earned, so long as we have not yet handed out the solutions. 5 Academic Integrity PolicyWe take the following policies very seriously. We will perform a thorough investigation of any breaches and report them to the Honor Council. If you feel overwhelmed/concerned about your status in the class, please talk to us! Please do not jeopardize your academic career over this class – we will work with you to get you any help that you might need. 5.1 Collaboration on Homework AssignmentsWe hope that you will discuss homework questions with your peers (i.e., students currently enrolled in the course). For many students, such discussions are the principal activity at our review sessions. Since we assume such collaboration, you need not announce it on the work that you submit—but… because homework scores get considerable weight in the course grade, and because we don’t believe you can learn the material without practicing on problems, we do not allow one person simply to copy the work done by another. If someone explains to you how to approach a problem, fine. But write out your own answer—and often a good answer will include some explanation of your method. We will look with disfavor on multiple submissions that match, word-for-word. In some rare cases it may be appropriate to acknowledge that a problem stumped you, so that you must give credit to someone who told you how to solve it. Note, however, you may not use solutions to prior term’s homework in completing the assignments. Indeed, you may not look at homework and exams from prior terms unless provided to you or authorized by the course staff. We recognize that these judgments are subtle, and matters of degree. We don’t want to distract you with writing lawyer-like acknowledgments. We do want you to worry a bit about the issue. Here is a relevant excerpt from the FAS “Student Handbook: “Students must acknowledge any collaboration and its extent in all submitted work; however, students need not acknowledge discussion with others of general approaches to the assignment….” To the extent that our discussion of collaboration seems to modify this policy, our discussion controls. (Even though we allow you to collaborate on homework assignments there are good reasons not to. It is far too easy to believe you know how to attack the material after working with others only to be rudely surprised on the exams where you have to solve the problems by yourself.) 5.2 Midterm and Final ExamAll work on the midterm and final exam will be entirely individual. Collaboration or use of non-approved external resources is not allowed. In general, we do not have makeup examinations available. If you miss an exam for any reason, you must notify us by email as soon as possible with the reason for your absence, and you must provide us with documentation that justifies your absence. If you do not notify us by email before the missed exam or, in the case of an emergency, as soon after the missed exam as is possible, we will count the absence as an unexcused absence, and the missed exam will count as a score of zero. 6 Grading6.1 Grading Rubric The course grade rests on roughly the following basis:
If we had a good way to measure lab performance we would count labs more heavily than this. Lab work is the core of this course. On the other hand, we’re attached to the notion that the labs should be 1) fun and 2) serve your interest in learning, not our interest in evaluating. So we think it’s probably all right that labs don’t get much grade weight, despite their importance. Please note, again, that you are expected to do the labs. We don’t require that you do them brilliantly, or that you finish each long lab, but that you stay for the lab session and make a reasonable effort to do the labs. If you don’t want to do labs, don’t take this course. If you don’t do nearly all the labs, you will not pass the course. (Probably this remark strikes you as strange, but it reflects occasional misunderstandings in past years.) Part of this evaluation is class participation. The course is more enjoyable for us with your active participation and it provides feedback on what concepts the class is having trouble with, so we include it in this section of your grade. Note that we are not grading you on providing the correct answer in class, only on your willingness to participate in the class discussion. 6.2 Grading PolicyHomework and exams will be graded stringently, because responding to feedback is how you learn! To make up for the scary grades on homework and exams, we curve the final grades based on a number of factors. Usually, students receive a final grade one to two grades higher than their numeric scores would suggest (unless your numeric score is 93 or higher in which case you are out of luck for a curve upwards). This is not a guarantee but we do try to make the grading fair considering the amount of time and work the course takes and our grading philosophy that telling you something is correct when it is not is not conducive to learning the material. 6.3 Lab reports? No!We do not expect lab reports, and we barely grade lab performance (see just above). But we do expect you to do all the labs. If you don’t do the labs, you can’t pass the course. As we have said elsewhere, people often fail to finish the labs, and we don’t want you to worry if that happens to you. You should worry if you fall far short of finishing, and do this repeatedly. If that is happening, you should try to push yourself to move faster on the early sections, so as to distribute your precious time more evenly over the lab work. Don’t stay stuck for long: ask for help when something in lab refuses to work, or makes no sense. We understand that much of our job is to get you unstuck. 7 Texts7.1 The Main TextThis is a book that embodies the course, in day-by-day doses: Learning the Art of Electronics, 2nd Edition by Tom Hayes and David Abrams with Paul Horowitz (2016, 2024). We’ll refer to this book as “LAoE.” It is available in hard copy and Adobe eBook Reader format. You will need to buy or rent this book for the course. (However, the material for the first two classes is posted on Canvas so you can hold off if you are still deciding if you want to take the course.) Warning – the second half of new edition (2nd ed. 2024) is entirely different from the first edition. You should not try to economize by buying a used copy of the old edition (which we will refer to as “LAoE_1”). We will cover a half or full chapter from the book in each class period. Each daily dose includes . . . Class Notes (“N”) These present the day’s topics much as the live or recorded discussion does—but the typed class notes in the book are much tidier and more complete. We think you should read these before coming to class (although, some students have told me they get more out of the notes by reading them after the class discussion). Lab (“L”) There is one for each of our meetings. You should flip through this so that you know what you’ll be doing in lab. The building of circuits goes much more smoothly when you can anticipate what you’ll be building. And knowing what’s in the lab will let you make choices about what parts of a lab to hurry through—or even to skip— in the event that you find yourself strapped for time. Supplementary Notes (“S”) These you can read or ignore unless specifically assigned. They treat a topic, offering an explanation that you may or may not find necessary. For example, on the first day, you’ll find a handout on reading resistors. If you’re familiar with this process, skip this handout entirely. Worked Examples (“W”) These are design problems, and may not interest you much as you prepare for class. But these can become keenly interesting when you’re working on a design for homework. Online Content (“O”) To avoid giving you a hernia (and to make the book publishable in one volume), we have moved some material online. These chapters are usually something you never need or only need once, or something that could change often and does not belong in hard copy. We will occasionally assign some material from an online chapter to read before class. 7.2 Posted ReadingsWe will also post modifications to the labs in LAoE on the Daily Class/Lab Assignments page if necessary to adapt them to the new material not in the book. 7.3 An Excellent Reference Book (not required)Horowitz & Hill, The Art of Electronics (Third Edition, 2015). This is a great reference book— almost surely the best general trove of circuit-design wisdom that you will find. But you don’t need it to get through this course happily. After the course, you will appreciate its depth and comprehensiveness. During the course, you’ll probably feel busy enough just reading the main text. We’ll refer to this book as “AoE.” LAoE is full of cross-references to AoE—but don’t let those worry you. Those cross references are for perhaps a second pass through LAoE, when you’re digging deeper into some topic. Our suggestion is that you not consider buying this until you finish the course. 7.4 Other Resources You Might Find Helpful7.4.1 BooksWe don’t recommend paralleling your reading in LAoE or AoE with reading another, more conventional electronics textbook. You’d end up spending a good deal of energy translating from the terms of one into the terms of the other. The engineers’ treatment would be much more mathematical than ours (and, we think, less helpful for development of intuition). But if you’d like a second source. . . . . . this is the text that was used in the SEAS’ introductory electronics course, Eng Sci 54: Scherz & Monk, Practical Electronics for Inventors ISBN-13: 978-1259587542 ISBN-10: 1259587541 This book is available in the Science Library, at the Coop and for online order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Alibris, AbeBooks, and other vendors. The list price for the book is $40. It (or an earlier version) may also be available online in the Harvard Library system. Some books for hobbyists and tinkerers can help to fill in background that we forget to explain (how instruments work, for example). Here are a few that looked good, to our hasty appraisal, plus one conventional treatment of electronics, in the style of an ordinary engineering course:
Several other books, as well as several of the resources listed above, are available on the Library Reserves Canvas page. The “Additional Resources and Interesting Stuff” Canvas page has links to some sites that may be helpful if you need some additional review of course topics. 7.4.2 SimulatorsAnalog: This analog simulator shows currents flowing–kind of like what a science museum’s interactive demo might show: http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-index.html Digital: This digital simulator is pretty good, too (30 day free trial; $29 to purchase): There is also a very nice, free digital timing diagram editor available at: We used it to create many of the timing diagrams in the digital sections of the book. Mixed Signal: Here is another online circuit simulator. It is free (for very small, <5 component circuits) but you need to register for access. A less limited, and still free, simulation engine is LTSpice, which works excellently on Windows computers and barely at all on Macs: https://www.analog.com/en/resources/design-tools-and-calculators/ltspice-simulator.html Programmable Logic: We will be using EDAPlayground to check our FPGA designs. We also strongly recommend the hdlbits web site problem sets as a way to learn Verilog HDL programming. See the FPGA page in Canvas for more information. https://www.edaplayground.com/ https://hdlbits.01xz.net/wiki/Problem_sets 8 A Few Innovations, in “recent” years:8.1 We post just about everything on the web, including our daily handwritten notesWe’ll use the Canvas page: Lecture Slides, Notes, and Handouts We will be posting scans of the daily lecture notes and homework solutions to the course Canvas site. We will also post sample exams and solutions to study from as we approach the midterm and final exams. 8.2 Occasional “anonymous quizzes” (warm up exercises)On some class days you will be asked to try a short quiz—without putting your name to the paper. We’ll talk about one or two of your responses in class. These quizzes are meant to let you—and your teachers—test whether ideas and skills are getting through to you. Since these quizzes are anonymous, they really test the teachers rather than you. While it is theoretically possible to match online material to individual students, we do not plan to nor is that our goal. We are much more interested in seeing what gives the group trouble and what concepts seem clear. The exercise will sometimes ask about the material that is new on the day it is given. We do that in order to encourage you to read before coming to class. Sometimes the exercise will look back a day, on the theory that you are likely to understand better what you had a chance to try out in lab. The solutions will be posted on the Lecture Notes tab of the course Canvas site. 8.3 Problem and exam solutionsWe hand out problem set and exam solutions in hard copy, usually on Thursday. Please do not share them or post them to the web. They are for your own use only. 8.4 A New MicrocontrollerWe will be using a modern ARM M0+ microcontroller with code written in the C language. However, we will learn enough ARM assembly language to understand the debugger dissassembly and see how the compiler translates your C code to something the uController can understand. Our emphasis will be less on programming and more on interfacing the processor to external devices. We will also use a Real Time Operating System [RTOS] to control multiple processes simultaneously. See the Microcontroller Resources page for additional information. 8.5 Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs)PLD’s are Programmable Logic Devices (PALs, GALs and FPGAs). PLDs provide an efficient way to make complex logic circuits with very little strain on either your brain or fingers (nothing to wire except inputs and outputs!). We’ve been including an older form of them in this course in a minor way for several years. We now devote significant class, homework and lab time, to these devices. You will use a 5,000 Look Up Table (LUT) FPGA device to program and test multiple digital devices and systems.
9 Class Size/ConstraintsWe will have supplies and equipment to support up to 20 students working in pairs in the lab. 10 ScheduleSee the Canvas Calendar |