Description
Welcome to Electronics lab! This lab is designed to help with your understanding of electronic devices and how they work. By the end of the lab, you should have attained some very practical skills. The goal of the labs is to achieve an understanding of electronics through hands on experience. By the end of the course, you should be adept at debugging circuits. You will also have a much better knowledge of all the tools that you can use to both construct and trouble shoot electronics.

Organization
Here are the labs that we will be covering:
1) The Voltage Divider and Ohm’s Lab. Thevenin and Norton.
2) AC Filters
3) Input and Output Impedance
4) RC, RL and RLC Circuits
5) Diodes
6) Transistors
7) OpAmps1
8) OpAmps2
9) Digital

In addition to these labs, there will be a special project you will complete at the end of the course. The special project will be your own; you will not receive help from the teaching assistants. The labs should not require more than one week (they usually take 3-4 hours in the lab if you arrive prepared).

Preparation and Required Supplies
You should download the electronics lab manual from the course website:
user.physics.unc.edu/~sean/Phys351/
You should also come to the lab with a pen and gridded notebook. If lab notebooks do not contain sufficient documentation of the labs, a lab notebook grade may be added. A scientific calculator is also required. Please come to the lab having already read the lab manual section for the day. Much of lab time is often spent searching for the correct components and building the circuit. You can’t afford to spend lab time trying to understand what is expected for the day. Some of you may be coming to this course with a generic idea of how to use certain tools such as an oscilloscope or soldering iron. If you have never heard of some of these tools before, it may help you to look at this webpage. You can find some useful information about how to use various resources here:
Technical resources

Some general, helpful electronics knowledge: You should also be aware that every electronics device ever manufactured has a data sheet which can be found online. The data sheet is specific to the particular manufacturer so unique and important information can be found on the data sheet. This is most useful when you are given a device that doesn’t come with any directions for use. For example, you may need to know the impedance for the pins of an OP07 (a type of op-amp). This kind of information is not written in tiny print on the actual IC. You must go find the data sheet. They are typically found easily by doing an online search for the component name and the word “data sheet”. The equipment in this lab has been used many times before, so you probably will never need to go looking for a data sheet, but tte manuals are available above in the technical resources. This level of technical info is needful though when you are doing your own research or electronics work later.

Lab Reports and Grading
Lab reports are due at the beginning of your next lab session. The TAs will be strict about this rule.

The lab reports must thoroughly explain your understanding of what was accomplished in lab. You must answer all the questions in the lab manual. The labs are due at the beginning of the the next lab. Late labs will not be accepted. Labs must be typed and stapled. Be as concise as possible, lab reports are limited to 8 pages.

The format of lab reports should be as follows:
• Cover page that must contain name, lab, section, honor pledge, lab time, and the abstract.
• Abstract - Brief one paragraph section describing what was done, might include some key results.
• Introduction – one to two paragraphs leading the reader into the rest of the lab report.
• Body - This is the meat of your report. Explain procedures. Present your results with accompanying figures. Answer all questions posed in the lab manual. There should be one section for each section in that week's lab.
• Conclusion – A few closing remarks regarding to the lab.

Graders are instructed to take away points for not following the prescribed format. Know your audience and write for them. There are many great (and not so great) examples of how to write a paper here: arxiv.org. Remember, you are scientists/engineers in training so it's time to start writing quality scientific papers now. It will make your life easier in the future.

While conversation and consultation among students is encouraged in the lab and afterwards to learn the material and the meaning of measurments, Lab Reports themselves are strictly individual efforts. Any duplication in separate lab reports will result in a zero on that lab and a report to the honor court. There may be special circumstances in which a TA will decide to set aside this rule for sets of data, but duplicated plots, prose, or circuit simulations are never allowed.