We teach an introductory electronics course in the physics department at
Cal State San Bernardino. It is at the freshman level with very little
math pre-request. We essentially require them to know a little algebra.
We remain almost exclusively in the analog realm. We start with Ohm's law
and end with lock in amplifiers in one quarter. The only criticism from
the NSF review panel that awarded the money to set up the lab, was that
we were too ambitious. The course is extemely laboratory intensive. It is
in a mixed laboratory/lecture format. I spend very little time lecturing
when I teach it. We can save time be using computer automation to handle
the tedious tasks. All of the instrumentation is GPIB or connected to a
data acquisition card. All of the computer routines are already written
for them. I want to stress that the students build actual circuits! They
blow up capacitors, burn resistors and pop chips.
We really had to bite our tongues and teach an electronics course, not an
electricity and magnetism course. We adopted the attitude of Horowitz and
Hill. One of the main values of the course is as a motivational tool.
Many students say that the course helps them tremendously in their math
courses. We probably teach more math in the course than physics. Our
students seem to relate to the basic math concepts when presented in the
context of electronics. We spend a fair amount of time on operational
amplifiers. Students build integrators and differentiators. We also
introduce exponential decay, resonance, and frequency domain, as well as
other math concepts that come up very naturally.
In sharp contrast the laboratory for, our calculus based introductory
physics course is almost completely devoid of high tech electronics. I
realize that this if very debatable, but we believe that, at this level,
the less technology between the student and the basic physics the better.
In our advanced lab for seniors, we hope students can bring the
technology and basic concepts together to conduct more advanced
experiments. Another thing we do in the introductory electronics course
is to try and set the stage for signal conditioning. A great deal of
experimental work in physics as well as other sciences like biology and
chemistry involves interfacing the phenomena of interest to a computer.
Tim Usher
Physics
California State University San Bernardino