DC circuits

0. Introduction
The main purpose of this lab is to get reacquainted with material previously covered in courses such as PHYS 208, i.e., Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's laws. At the same time, it offers the opportunity to become familiar with important parts of the electronic instrumentation used in this course. You will find some instructions on the various instruments in Equipment.

There is powerful software available to simulate the electronic circuits that you will design and assemble in this course. This offers a number of opportunities: You can very quickly build up some intuition for how particular circuits work, especially since it is much easier to change component values and circuit configurations in "click and drag" software than in hardware. You can check and improve new designs before you go through the trouble of actually building something. The use of simulation software largely removes the tedium of calculating through the circuit. If you have a reasonable understanding of how a circuit is supposed to work, it is usually very easy to change component values until you have achieved the desired behavior. In this course, we will use Electronic WorkBench (EWB) to simulate and develop circuits. EWB is available on all computers in the electronics and
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computer labs. As much as possible, you should use this software before you start building an actual circuit in hardware. Not only will it give you a better understanding of what you are supposed to accomplish, but since the software very closely matches the hardware, it will also help you with the assembly, and especially the wiring, of your circuits. Furthermore, you can immediately check the actual values of currents and voltages in your circuit against the results of the simulation.

One of the themes of this course is that well designed circuits, build with modern components, show a performance very close to the design parameters. You should not be happy with only approximate agreement between your calculated (simulated) and measured values. The resistors in your circuits have a tolerance of 1%, the multimeter has combined errors that are even smaller. Typically, the uncertainties in your circuits do not amount to more than a few percent.

It is the purpose of this course to get you to point where you can independently design and build simple but useful electronic circuits. To avoid a situation in which you "just follow instructions", this manual is often not very explicit, especially when it comes to appropriate component values, how many measurements to take, or what instrument to use. Thus you have to ask yourself what you wish to accomplish in a particular lab session, and what might be the best approach. Electronic workbench can be of great help here.

Before you start assembling circuits, look at the information on

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resistors in Components, and read the sections The proto board and The Keithley 200 multimeter in Equipment.

1. Resistance and Ohms Law

Measure your bodys resistance by holding the two test leads for your DMM in each hand. Find a 1 M resistor, and verify its resistance. Measure the resistance of the 1 M while holding the resistor against the test leads with your hands. different. Explain why the resistance is

2. Ohms Law
Measure the current and voltage through/across a 2 k resistor, as is shown in figure 1, and verify Ohms Law. Use the prototype boards power supply to provide different input voltages. The four terminals on the power supply are +12 V, -12 V, +5 V, and GND. Verify which terminal corresponds to which potential.

Figure 1. Circuit to verify Ohms Law.

3. Resistance networks
Assemble the circuit shown in figure 2, using the DC power supply that
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is part of your prototyping board to provide the input voltages.

Verify Kirchhoff's current law for nodes A and B. Verify Kirchhoff's voltage law for 3 distinct loops in the circuit. Compare the measured values for the currents and voltages with EWB simulation results.

F Figure 2. A circuit to test Kirchhoff's laws

Resistor networks can function as current or voltage dividers. An example of current division is shown in fig. 3a, a voltage divider in fig. 3b.

For fig. 3, determine for a wide range of resistance ratios R2/R1 the currents I0, I1 and I2. (resistance ratios should be approx. 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, and 100). To avoide exceeding the power rating of the resistors use
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values greater then 100 for R0. Verify that I1/I2 = R2/R1 and that I1 + I2 = I0. For fig. 3b, measure, again for a wide range of resistance ratios, the voltage ratio Vout/Vin. Compare with simulation results!

Figure 3a. I0

I1 + I2

Figure 3b. Voltage divider

For one of the circuits in part II, check that all currents and voltages scale exactly linearly with the applied (input) voltage.

4. The diode as a non-linear circuit element

In contrast to the resistor, a diode is a strongly non-linear device. The voltage across a diode is not proportional to the current through it, nor is it independent of the current
I

The stripe/band on the device corresponds to the cathode

direction. In this exercise you are asked to measure the current-voltage characteristic of a diode. This is most Diode
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conveniently done using two DMMs, one to measure the current and one for the voltage. (Fig. 4). The current can be varied from below 1A to 100 mA by changing R. Plot your results (I as a function of V) in two different ways. First use a linear scale for both V and I. You will note that since the values for the current cover a very wide range, most of your data hugs the V-axis. Now plot it with the current on a log scale. The data should fall on a straight line, i.e. log(I) V. Note that this holds over many decades! Also try to measure the reverse current. Investigate how EWB treats diodes.

Figure 4. Circuit to measure the I-V relation for a diode. Use the diode 1N4148

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5. Thermistors and photo resistors

The behavior of devices like resistors and diodes is somewhat temperature dependent. Most of the time this is considered a disadvantage, especially if the circuit in which they are used has to function over a wide temperature range. However, some devices are intentionally made in such a way that they have a large temperature coefficient. This makes them suitable for example as thermometers. Resistors with a large temperature coefficient are called thermistors. Here we will investigate two kinds of thermistors. The first one is primarily intended as a thermometer. It has a negative temperature coefficient and for that reason is often referred to as a NTC. Measure the resistance of the NTC using the DMM and convince yourself that it could be useful as a thermometer. Use the hot soldering iron to raise the thermistors temperature.

The second device differs in two ways from the first one. It has a positive temperature coefficient, and more importantly, the actual resistance of the device increases dramatically at a fairly well defined temperature. This leads to the following curious effect. At low

currents/voltages the PTC acts more or the less as a regular resistor, with a modest temperature coefficient. When the current is increased, the dissipation in the device goes up, and it gets warm. When its temperature reaches a certain value, its resistance suddenly increases substantially, which limits the current. In this way the PTC can be used to protect circuits against the effects of accidentally imposed large currents.

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Investigate, in some detail the behavior of the PTC using a circuit similar to fig. 4. Especially note that there is a voltage range for which the current decreases with increasing voltage! However, keep in mind that since this depends on the device warming up, it will take some time before it reaches a steady state. Exercise some care. Electronic circuit elements can get hot. While they are typically too small to do real damage, you can burn a finger.

EWB doesn't support thermistors. Any idea why it doesn't?

Temperature is not the only parameter that can influence resistance. In the lab you will also find photo resistors, which change their resistance depending on the intensity of the light that falls on them. You should have no trouble demonstrating this effect.

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