Course layout
The course can be divided in these parts:
Book
The main book is the second half excellent "Student manual for the Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hayes (ISBN 0-521-37709-9-9). It is RECOMMENDED. It has been described by some reviewers as "one of the books to bring to a desert island." (It can be obtained used from Amazon.com for about $25, and is worth it.)
Another recommended suggested reading is "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hayes -- the electronics bible itself. It runs for $65-$90 new, and from $55 up used. Although this book is not strictly necessary as the "Student manual" contains the necessary material to do the labs, it is quite useful as a reference book. Anybody planning to work with electronics later in life should eventually own it. (In fact this is the single electronics book I most commonly find on my colleague's bookshelves, or, occasionally, open on their desks.)
However, a very useful auxiliary book may be "Rapid Prototyping of
Digital Design textbook" by James O. Hamblin and Michael D. Furman, since
it describes a set of exercises with the same setup we have here: UP2 test
board and Altera's MAX+PLUSII software. Information about this book,
as well as others more advanced books on digital electronics can be found
here.
However, I have a copy and I will keep it in the lab, so that the
people working after hours can use it as a reference.
Speaking of "Rapid Prototyping..." textbook, please check the author's
website on the course at Georgia Tech that is based on UP2 and MAX+PLUSII.
In principle, what they can do there we can do here at JHU...
Online manuals
Time to work together
The course will meet Fridays 11:00-2:00 PM to discuss the material and do the key labs in three parallel groups. Discussion and collegial exchange of information is strongly encouraged, as it will sometimes be easier to the students who have just gotten the setup to work to help their less successful colleagues.
Debugging is probably the most important
skill that the students should obtain from this course, as it is vital in
all experimental work in Physics, Engineering and beyond. Not all components
will be connected properly in the first attempt. Moreover, sometimes
the components themselves will be bad, or they will get damaged in the process
of setting up. It is essential to learn to quickly find out why something
is not working. This can be learned only by tracking down a number
of problems on our own or in a small group, and that is the main motivation
for the structure of the Monday session.
Time to work on your own
Any other time. Some tricks will take longer to `sink in' and will
thus require more playing with the setup to get it to work and really get
a good grasp of what is happening. All students will have a key of
the "Advanced Lab" space, and they are welcome to come and play with the
equipment on their own.
People
Instructor: Petar Maksimovic. Not always in town but reading email fairly regularly.
TA: Jennifer Pursley (in semi-retirement), Vivek Thampy (in training)
Students: Karol Gryczynski, Daniel Simon, Peter Bythrow, Jacob Stern, Joel Bethepu, Patrick Reiner, Shiroman Prakash.
Email instructors.
Email everybody.