Portal:Electronics

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The Electronics Portal

The field of electronics comprises the study and use of systems that operate by controlling the flow of electrons (or other charge carriers) in devices such as thermionic valves and semiconductors. The design and construction of electronic circuits to solve practical problems is an integral technique in the field of electronics engineering and is equally important in hardware design for computer engineering. All applications of electronics involve the transmission of either information or power. Most deal only with information.

Consumer electronics are electronic devices intended for everyday use by people. Consumer electronics usually find applications in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Consumer electronics are manufactured throughout the world, although there is a particularly high concentration of manufacturing activity in the Far East. One overriding characteristic of all consumer electronic products is the trend of ever-falling prices. This is driven by gains in manufacturing efficiency and automation, coupled with improvements in semiconductor design.

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Selected biography

Joseph Henry (December 17, 1797 – May 13, 1878) was a Scottish-American scientist. During his lifetime, he was considered one of the greatest American scientists since Benjamin Franklin. While building electromagnets, he discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self-inductance. He also discovered mutual inductance independently of Faraday, though Faraday was the first to publish his results. His work on the electromagnetic relay was the basis of the electrical telegraph, jointly invented by Samuel Morse and Charles Wheatstone. The SI unit of inductance, the henry, is named after him.

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Credit: User:Omegatron
Various phone jacksymbols, to show every type of functionality. edit

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Image:Semitrans3 k.gif
Credit: commons:User:Zedh
IGBTmodule from SEMIKRON. edit

News

April 30, 2008

HP Labs announces the creation of a Memristor, the fourth basic element of electronic circuits with the Resistor, Capacitor, and Inductor. More...

December 4, 2007

On the third day of the 2007 Taipei IT Month in Taiwan yesterday, notebook computers and desktop computers built with AMD's Phenom processor and Intel Penryn processor openly battled for the consumer-market after each company launched their quad core processors. More...

February 27, 2007

The new South Pole Telescope has recently collected its first light in a long-term project to learn about the nature of dark energy. More...

January 30, 2007

A Sea Launch Zenit 3SL rocket has exploded on its Ocean Odyssey launch pad, just seconds before it was scheduled to launch. The engine had just been started when the rocket appeared to fall downwards, and was engulfed in a fireball. More...

January 30, 2007

The primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down and is likely to only be restored to partial functionality, according to reports from NASA. More...

Archive...

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Main topics

Electronics - Consumer electronics - Engineering - Manufacturing - Symbols - Terms - Units - Waste

Theory: Ampère's law - Coulomb's law - Frequency - Hall effect - Joule's laws - Kirchhoff's laws - Millman's Theorem - Moore's Law - Norton's theorem - Ohm's law - Peukert's law - Resistance - Thévenin's theorem-superposition - Wavelength

Components: Antenna - Capacitor - Connectors - Diode - Fuse - Ground - Inductor - Integrated circuit - LCD - Magnetron - Phased array - Printed circuit board - Resistor - Thermocouple - Transformer - Transistor - Switch - Wire

Circuits: AC - Bridge - Designs - Diagrams - DC - Impedance - Load - Series and parallel - Voltage divider - Voltage drop

Fields: Avionics - Computer systems - Control systems - Electromechanics - Microelectronics - Military - Optoelectronics - Power - Quantum electronics - Radio - Robotics - Semiconductors - Spintronics - Telecommunications

Products: Cameras - Computers - Fiber optics - Lasers - Lights - Mobile phones - Printed circuit board - Radios - TVs

Companies: AMD - Apple - Bose - Canon - Cray - Dell - Fujitsu - Garmin - HP - IBM - Intel - JVC - Kyocera - LG - Microsoft - NEC - Nintendo - Philips - Pioneer - RadioShack - Samsung - Siemens - Sirius - Sony - Texas Instruments - Xerox

People: Ampère - Becquerel - Bell - Coulomb - Edison - Einstein - Faraday - Gauss - Geiger - Hall - Henry - Hertz - Joule - Kirchhoff - Marconi - Moore - Ohm - Ørsted - Planck - Siemens - Tesla - Volta - Watt - Weber

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Consumer showcase

A glucose meter is a medical device for determining the approximate concentration of glucose in the blood. It is a key element of home blood glucose monitoring by people with diabetes mellitus or with proneness to hypoglycemia. A small drop of blood obtained by pricking the skin with a lancet is placed on a disposable test strip, which the meter reads and uses to calculate the blood glucose level. The meter then displays the level in mg/dl or mmol/l.

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Selected article

Capacitance is a measure of the amount of electric charge stored (or separated) for a given electric potential. The capacitance of the majority of capacitors used in electronic circuits is several orders of magnitude smaller than the farad. The energy (measured in joules) stored in a capacitor is equal to the work done to charge it.

In a capacitor, there are two conducting electrodes which are insulated from one another. The charge on the electrodes is +Q and -Q, and V represents the potential difference between the electrodes. The SI unit of capacitance is the farad; 1 farad = 1 coulomb per volt.

The capacitance can be calculated if the geometry of the conductors and the dielectric properties of the insulator between the conductors are known, such as above, where; C is the capacitance in farads, ε is the permittivity of the insulator used (or ε0 for a vacuum), A is the area of each plane electrode in square metres, d is the separation between the electrodes in metres. The equation is a good approximation if d is small compared to the other dimensions of the electrodes.

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