ME 333 Circuits Review Material

The following material will not be covered in ME 333 Introduction to Mechatronics, since a prerequisite for this course is ME 233 Electronics Design or an equivalent course. You are expected to

• know the units and constitutive laws for linear circuit elements (resistors, capacitors, inductors)
• understand first-order exponential response and RC and L/R time constants for RC and RL circuits
• understand the steady-state behavior of capacitors and inductors
• be able to calculate the power dissipated by, or produced by, various circuit elements (current times voltage)
• be able to set up simultaneous linear equations and solve for currents flowing through networks of resistors, voltage sources, and current sources (Kirchhoff's current and voltage laws)
• be able to calculate the energy in capacitors and inductors
• understand how diodes work, and their current vs. voltage curve
• understand how bipolar junction transistors work, both NPN and PNP, and their cut-off, linear (active), and saturation modes
• be able to reason about circuits containing both linear elements and nonlinear elements
• solve circuits containing ideal op-amps (infinite gain, input terminals are at same voltage if there is any negative feedback path, infinite input impedance, zero output impedance) and applications like inverting amplifiers, summer, integrator, differentiator

Most of these topics are covered under the wiki page Electronics basics. In particular, if you understand the material on the following pages, you are in good shape.

• Basic Linear Circuits Review
• Resistors (Ohm's Law), Capacitors, and Inductors
• Voltage and Current Dividers
• Kirchhoff's Current and Voltage Laws
• RC and RL Exponential Responses
• Passive Filters
• Diodes and Transistors (FETs not required)
• Operational Amplifiers (Op-Amps) (the wikipedia page is also a good reference)

You should try this practice problem set after you've reviewed any topics you are rusty on. When you have solved the problems, you can check your solutions against this solution set. Do not look at the solutions until you've at least given a good effort to solve the problems on your own! You can also check out this circuits quiz from 2011.