Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering: Laboratory Journal

This laboratory jornal is intended for use in an Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering course and is appropriate for two- and four-year electrical engineering curriculums. The manual contains sufficient exercises for a typical 15-week course using a two-to-three-hour practicum period. The topics range from basic laboratory procedures series-parallel circuits, mesh and nodal analysis, an introduction to capacitors and inductors as well as basic digital logic, Boolean equivalents, digital encoders, decoders, mux and demux circuits as well as basic circuits for digital computation. For equipment, each lab station should include a dual adjustable DC power supply and a quality DMM capable of reading DC voltage, current and resistance. A selection of standard value ¼ watt carbon film resistor ranging from a few ohms to a few mega ohms is required along with 10 kΩ and 100 kΩ potentiometers, 100 nF and 220 nF capacitors, and a few discrete 7400 series logic gates and 555 timers.Each exercise begins with an Objective and a Theory Overview. The Equipment List follows with space provided for serial numbers and measured values of components. Schematics are presented next along with the step-by-step procedure. All data tables are grouped together, typically with columns for the theoretical and experimental results, along with a column for the percent deviations between them. Finally, a group of appropriate questions are presented. For those with longer scheduled lab times, a useful addition is to simulate the circuit(s) with a SPICE-based tool such as LTSpice, or similar software, and compare those results to the theoretical and experimental results as well. Read more