ghost
commented
3 years ago -
Thanks!
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(preserving ordering, Github clobbered it).
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That was intended. I was looking for a way to unify everything we were looking for into one thing: the circuit's transfer function. I still have nightmares about when I'd write down 30 equations for a circuit with 4 loops, then try to find the variable I wanted just through tons of typing on my calculator (i.e., I didn't know how to strategize, whether I was using RREF or not). To mitigate that problem for other people, I wanted to introduce the kinds of results we're looking for right away (transfer functions and Ohm's Law, basically). Electrostatics is another good example of this. Ultimately, we're looking for the E field or the charge distribution/potential that produces it.
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Yikes, that's pretty bad! Can't believe I forgot about that. I'll stick it in the next commit.
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I do plan on using the EET pretty extensively in the Problems pages. That was what got me through circuit analysis. I'll move the return ratio to the Digressions section. I don't really use it often myself.
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Nodal analysis is in there, under "KVL and KCL".
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Yeah, I wasn't sure how to handle that. I wanted to make sure and put analytical answers in there, too. Putting analytical answers in-text kind of defeats their purpose, I think, so I'll put analytical questions in the Problems section. Then I can stick to numerical examples in-text, like you have in the other two courses.
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Gotta add the pictures I drew!
edmundsj
Some comments on overall ordering / content. These are initial comments from just reading the syllabus, I'll add to this while reading the lessons.
It looks like there are some formatting issues on the site in comparison to the other pages (no whitespace on the left-hand side, no title, no forward/back buttons). I think rather than worrying too much about this, we should just try to migrate to reST. This will also make creating forward/back buttons and quizzes much easier and we don't have to worry about headers/footers as that's all handled by the template.
Your presentation of topics introduces the idea of impedance and complex exponential decomposition very early compared to most texts / courses. Circuits its taught pretty early at most universities (at mine it was in my second year, and signals & systems wasn't until the third). I think it might be a good idea to push this until later in the course once people are comfortable with doing things with resistors and time-domain analysis, and not rely on Fourier Transforms for the explanations.
It looks like there's no time-domain analysis in here. That's really important for basic circuits (especially RC circuits and the concept of the time constant). I suggest you put it prior to the frequency-domain stuff so people can get used to the idea of voltages and currents changing with time.
The EET and return ratio are reasonably advanced circuit techniques. I would suggest moving these to the "digressions" section unless you are going to make heavy use of them in circuit analysis.
It looks like nodal analysis isn't covered here either. I would add that in part 1, it's a great brute-force technique that (almost) always works. It's a great fallback technique for students (including myself) to use when they don't know what else to do, and is definitely important enough to be covered in an intro course. Mesh analysis no one in their right mind actually uses. Not sure it's necessary to cover, except maybe with a mention.
There need to be more in-text examples. The way that students learn in the physical sciences and engineering is by doing problems, and if our goal is to teach students these concepts and help them become familiar with them, examples (and worked examples) are probably the most important part. This will be considerably easier once we move to using reST instead of php, but I would at least write up 2 examples to go with each lesson and their answers, even if they aren't yet in interactive quiz form so that it's a copy-paste problem.