Introduction To Electric Circuits

James A. Svoboda is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clarkson University where he teaches courses on topics such as circuits electronics, and computer programming. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and M.S. from the University of Colorado, and a B. S. from General Motors Institute.Sophomore Circuits is one of Professor Svoboda's favorite courses. He has taught this course to 2500 undergraduates at Clarkson University over the past 21 years. In 1996, he received Clarkson University's Distinguished Teaching Award.Professor Svoboda has written several research papers describing the advantages of using nullors to model electric circuits for computer analysis. He is interested in the way technology affects engineering education and has developed several software packages for use in Sophomore Circuits.

Introduction to Electric Circuits

As we all know that modern life is overwhelmingly dependent on electricity, it is quite important for people to understand simple electrical circuits. A simple electrical circuits introduction is a good assistant for you to better know electrical circuits.

An electrical circuit is a closed loop of conductive material that allows electrons to flow through continuously without beginning or end. There is continuous electrical current goes from the supply to the load in an electrical circuit. People also say that a complete path, typically through conductors such as wires and through circuit elements, is called an electric circuit.

An electrical circuit is an electrical device that provides a path for electrical current to flow. After you get the definition of the electrical circuit, now we are going to show you three simple electrical circuits.

A switch is a device for making and breaking the connection in an electric circuit. We operate switches for lights, fans, electric hair drier and more many times a day, but we seldom try to see the connection made inside the switch circuit. The function of the switch is to connect or complete the circuit going to the load from the supply. It has moving contacts which are normally open.

If you are looking to build a temperature-sensing device or you need to add sensing capabilities to a large system, you will have to familiarize yourself with thermocouples circuits and understand how to design them. A thermocouple is a device consisting of two dissimilar conductors that contact each other at one or more spots, and it is used to measure temperature. As you can see from the picture below that a thermocouple is made of two wires - iron and constantan, with a voltmeter. If the cold junction temperature is kept constant, then the EMF is proportional to the temperature of the hot junction.

A collection of electronic components that have been assembled andinterconnected to perform a given function is commonly referred to asa circuit. Electronic circuits can be divided into two broadcategories: digital and analog. We will be focusing on digital butwill touch on analog because many applications require a knowledge ofboth. The word circuit derives from the fact that electricpower must flow from the positive terminal of a power source throughone or more electronic devices and back to the negative terminal of apower source, thereby forming a circuit. If the connections between anelectronic device and either the positive or negative terminals of apower supply are interrupted, the circuit will be broken and thedevice will not function.

Many different types of components and devices can be found in moderncircuits including; resistors, capacitors, inductors, semiconductordevices like diodes, transistors, integrated circuits, transducerslike microphones, light sensors, motions sensors, actuators likemotors, solenoids, and various other devices like heating and lightingelements. Devices in a circuit are connected to one another by meansof electrical conductors, or wires. These wires can move electriccurrents between various points in a circuit. Once a wire connects twoor more devices, the wire and all attached device connectors are saidto form a single circuit node, or net. Any electrical activityon a given net is communicated to all devices attached to the net.Certain nets provide electric power to devices, and other nets carryinformation between devices. Nets that carry information are calledsignals, and signals transport information encoded as voltage levelsaround a circuit. Signal nets typically use smaller conductors, andtransport very small currents. Nets that carry power are calledsupply rails (or just rails) and supply rails transportelectric power around a circuit. Rails typically use much largerconductors that signal nets, because they must transport largercurrents.

An introduction to electric circuits in preparation for the FE exam, and the application of electric power systems to mining. The course reviews physical principles applicable to electrical circuits, basic circuit laws and their application to simple DC and AC circuits, including ideal transformers. Three phase circuits and their analysis in simple cases and the electrical characteristics of typical AC and DC motors are studied. This material is then extended to typical mining operations. Particular attention is focused on the relationship between production rates and power usage and associated costs; electrical safety; and common power system terminology with which mining engineers should be conversant.

Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwell's equations. Various common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.

The presence of either a positive or negative electric charge produces an electric field. The movement of electric charges is an electric current and produces a magnetic field.In most applications, a force acts on a charge with a magnitude given by Coulomb's law. Electric potential is typically measured in volts.

Electrical phenomena have been studied since antiquity, though progress in theoretical understanding remained slow until the 17th and 18th centuries. The theory of electromagnetism was developed in the 19th century, and by the end of that century electricity was being put to industrial and residential use by electrical engineers. The rapid expansion in electrical technology at this time transformed industry and society, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution. Electricity's extraordinary versatility means it can be put to an almost limitless set of applications which include transport, heating, lighting, communications, and computation. Electrical power is now the backbone of modern industrial society.[1]

Long before any knowledge of electricity existed, people were aware of shocks from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", and described them as the "protectors" of all other fish. Electric fish were again reported millennia later by ancient Greek, Roman and Arabic naturalists and physicians.[2] Several ancient writers, such as Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, attested to the numbing effect of electric shocks delivered by electric catfish and electric rays, and knew that such shocks could travel along conducting objects.[3] Patients with ailments such as gout or headache were directed to touch electric fish in the hope that the powerful jolt might cure them.[4]

Ancient cultures around the Mediterranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers. Thales of Miletus made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 BCE, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing.[5][6][7][8] Thales was incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic effect, but later science would prove a link between magnetism and electricity. According to a controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature.[9]

Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert wrote De Magnete, in which he made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber.[5] He coined the New Latin word electricus ("of amber" or "like amber", from ἤλεκτρον, elektron, the Greek word for "amber") to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed.[10] This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.[11]

Further work was conducted in the 17th and early 18th centuries by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay.[12] Later in the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky.[13] A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature.[14] He also explained the apparently paradoxical behavior[15] of the Leyden jar as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge in terms of electricity consisting of both positive and negative charges.[12]

While the early 19th century had seen rapid progress in electrical science, the late 19th century would see the greatest progress in electrical engineering. Through such people as Alexander Graham Bell, Ottó Bláthy, Thomas Edison, Galileo Ferraris, Oliver Heaviside, Ányos Jedlik, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Charles Algernon Parsons, Werner von Siemens, Joseph Swan, Reginald Fessenden, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, electricity turned from a scientific curiosity into an essential tool for modern life.[22] 041b061a72