Lab Information for Physics 3150

• Lab 1  An introduction to the electronics lab.  A voltage divider is investigated using both dc measurements with digital multimeters (DMMs) and ac measurements with an oscilloscope.  The circuit is then simulated using the PartSim SPICE program.
• Lab 2 Thévenin’s theorem and Characteristic curves.  In Part I, construct and measure a resistor bridge circuit and its Thévenin equivalent.  In Part II, build a homemade "characteristic curve" tracer and use it on a resistor, a diode, and a capacitor.
• Lab 3  RC circuits and resonant RLC circuits.
• Lab 4  Diode circuits, including diode clamps, basic unregulated power supplies, and nonlinear frequency mixing.
• Lab 5  Basic transistor circuits, including an emitter follower, a switch, and a common-emitter amplifier.
• Lab 6  FET circuits, saturated and unsaturated; inverting amplifier with an operational amplifier and negative feedback.
• Lab 7 Operational Amplifiers: fixed-gain amplifiers, integrators, current-to-voltage conversion; op amp limitations.
• Lab 8  Comparators and positive feedback; basic digital gates; Computer data acquisition with LabView Signal Express.
• Lab 9  Digital logic: decoders, sequential circuits, D–A conversion.
• Lab 10  Embedded control: building a tiny but complete computer system using a dsPIC30 microcontroller.  The source code and MPLAB project files are available in Phys3150.X.zip.

• Sample_Lab_Report.pdf  Sample report for a hypothetical lab, related to Lab 2 above.
• Sample_Lab_Report.docx  Microsoft word file with sample report, usable as a template.  Note that there are three pre-defined styles that you may find useful: "Report body," "Heading 1," and "Heading 2."

Final Project: A list of suggestions is available in the ‘Problem Sets’ section of this web page, although other ideas are also welcome.