Unit 6: Electronics and Reactive Circuits

The authors of Nuffield Advanced Physics decided to include electronics in the course for two reasons.
1. It could be useful in the future. Students could expect to find themselves using electronic devices in many courses of further education, and in a very wide variety of future careers, including medicine and jobs directly to do with computers, as well as work in pure and applied physical science.
2. It gave an opportunity for a new style of work, reflecting the tastes and problems of the engineer rather than those of the physicist. In much of the course, students were required to analyse things and take them apart in the manner of the pure scientist. In this Unit students were asked to synthesise, to put things together to serve a purpose, in the manner of the engineer.

Contents of the Students’ book
*To the student
*Summary of Unit
*Systems and feedback
*Microelectronics: Where are they heading?
*Questions
*Putting electronics to use
*Answers
*Information and data
*Books and further reading

Experiments suggested for the Unit
6.1 Simple radio
6.2 Input and output behaviour of the basic unit
6.3 Input and output currents in the basic unit
6.4 Jobs to do, using simple combinations of modules
6.5 Bistable module; multivibrator module; AND-gate module
6.6 Amplification and feedback
6.7 Pulses into RC circuits
6.8 Slow alternating current in a circuit containing capacitance
6.9 Phase differences in an RC circuit (simple two-beam oscilloscope)
6.10 Power in alternating current circuits
6.11 Operational amplifiers and analogue computing
6.12 The behaviour of an inductor
6.13 Pulses into LR circuits
6.14 Phase differences in an LR circuit
6.1 5 Changes of current with frequency in circuits containing capacitance and inductance
6.16 Oscillations in a parallel LC circuit
6.17 Resonance in a parallel LC circuit
6.18 Radio, and 'slow radio'
6.19 Putting electronics to work