Lab 1 was very basic – using the breadboard, Ohm’s law, mostly things I already new. However, this lab helped me internalize one critical thing – output impedance. I’d read about it, but I didn’t really understand, on an instinctive level, why you want low output impedance and high input impedance in circuits. This was something that needed to be played with.
Exercise 1L4 was very satisfying – it involved measuring I and V through a diode and plotting the results. The resulting plot, done in Excel, matched exactly the expected diode curve. The science worked! See linear and log graphs – perfect straight line on the log graph, as predicted:
Exercise 1L3 required a little bit of work. The lab called for using a bare meter movement to do some of the experiments. Unfortunately, no movement was listed in the parts list. I ended up buying an uxcell 0-100uA ammeter from Amazon:
Worked well.
The lab guide called for soldering a pair of 1N4004 across the movement, one in each direction, to protect it from excess voltage. I did just that, as can be seen in the pictures:
The lab was otherwise uneventful.