PHYS 404 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Course Description

Objectives

The objective of PHYS 404 is to give you the confidence to analyze and build simple electronic circuits. The first half of the course will focus on analog electronics.  We'll discuss steady state circuit analysis using complex numbers, simple time-domain analysis, a little bit of semiconductor physics, pn junctions and transistors.   After that we'll look at amplifiers, feedback, control circuits, filters, oscillators, optoelectronic devices, electronic noise and signal to noise improvement.   The second half of the course will focus more on digital electronics: field effect transistors, logic gates,  digital electronics, signal processing, analog/digital circuits, modulation, feedback and control.  Lecture notes will be posted for each class.  

Course Structure

Laboratory

Two 3-hour sessions per week in 6106 Engineering Science Building.  

60% of your grade comes from the lab.  Normally, this would be 6 hours per week of on-time, mandatory attendance with the TAs present.  Once again, Covid has changed everything.  My plan is to hold in-person labs with TAs, in ESB, during the scheduled hours, for the first 3 weeks of the course.   The intent here is to bring everyone up to speed with test equipment and wiring circuits.   After that, we'll give each of you a box of electronics that can be taken home.   From that point on, all labs will be done remotely.   At the regularly scheduled lab times your TA will be on Zoom to assist you.   Sometimes you'll be asked to demonstrate the operation of some circuit.   Lab descriptions will be posted ahead of time.  After the introductory lab, all the other labs last for two weeks (four 2-hour lab sessions).  One week after a two-week lab period ends, you'll need to hand in a lab report.  It should be typed and include schematics and descriptions of the circuits you wired and tested.   The specific requirement will be listed in each lab description. 

Lectures

Two 2-hour lectures per week, Mondays & Wednesdays from 1:00 p.m. to 2:50 p.m. in 35 Loomis.  For the fall 2020 semester, lectures will be entirely online.  I will give the lectures during the regularly scheduled class time and record them for later viewing.

Problem sets

The will be problem sets roughly every two weeks. Solutions will be available online after the due date.

Exams

There wil be a 2 hour midterm and a 3 hour final exam, both conducted remotely. 

Grade determination

Everyone will receive a normalized point total from 0-1000.   The breakdown is as follows:

Labs: 600 pts

Homework: 200 pts

Exams: 200 pts

Letter grades will be based on this total but there are no predetermined point boundaries.  The boundaries are determined by the performance of the class as a whole.