ELEC 225: Circuit Theory I
Bucknell University, Fall 2011


Course Objectives:

Students finishing this course will understand fundamental circuit analysis techniques, including sinusoidal steady-state methods. Students will be prepared to take ELEC 226 in the next semester, which will include time-domain circuit analysis, Laplace transform methods, and frequency-domain analysis of circuits and signals.

Instructor and Office Hours:

Richard J. Kozick
Office: Room 67 Breakiron
Phone: (570) 577-1129
FAX: (570) 577-1822
Email: kozick@bucknell.edu
Web: http://www.linux.bucknell.edu/~kozick

Office hour schedule for Professor Kozick for Fall, 2011 is 

Tuesday:    10 - 11  and 1 -  3
Thursday:   11 - 12
Friday:      9 - 10

Other times can be arranged - talk to me in class, send email, or call.
Refer to the course web page for the most up-to-date office hours.

Prerequisites:

ELEC 120 and MATH 201, 202. Corequisite: MATH 211.


Required Textbook:

Circuits (Second Printing), by F.T. Ulaby & M.M. Maharbiz, National Technology and Science Press, 2010.

The library has many books on circuit analysis. I encourage you to read a variety of books in order to see different explanations and additional examples.


Course Web Page:

The web page for the ELEC 225 course is located at
http://www.linux.bucknell.edu/~kozick/elec22511
It can also be accessed by following the link from
http://www.linux.bucknell.edu/~kozick

The course home page contains homework assignments, syllabus, laboratory assignments, and other course information. Homework solutions will be posted on Moodle.

Grading:

Grades for the course will be determined as follows. 

Two in-class exams (20% each)              40% 
Final exam                                 25%
Homework and brief, in-class quizzes       20%
Laboratories                               15%


Exams and Quizzes:

Two in-class exams will be given on the following dates:
Friday, Sept. 30 and
Friday, Nov. 11.
The course will conclude with a comprehensive final exam.

Short quizzes (announced or unannounced) may also be given to check your understanding of the material as we proceed through the course. Missed quizzes cannot be made-up, but your lowest quiz grade will be dropped.


Homework:

Homework will be assigned regularly to give you practice with the course material. It will be due at the beginning of class on the specified due date. Late assignments will not be accepted because solutions will be posted on Moodle and reviewed during class on the due date. The final homework grade is computed as follows. If there are a total of P points on N homework assignments, then your total homework points H are converted to a percentage as (H/P)*N/(N-1)*100%. Therefore if you miss a total of (P/N) points on the homework (corresponding to the average value of one assignment), then your overall homework grade is still 100%. The maximum homework grade is 100%.

You are allowed and encouraged to work on the homework with groups of your classmates. The purpose of the homework is to practice with the material and to improve your understanding. I encourage you to learn from each other, and also to see me for help when you have questions. However, the homework solutions that you submit for grading must be written individually. Be sure that you understand the reasoning for each problem, even if you initially solved the problem with help from your classmates.


Laboratories:

Each student will attend a total of seven laboratory sessions, with the schedule available on the Laboratories link on the course web page. Students will work in pairs (or groups of three if necessary) on the labs for this course. Some of the lab exercises will serve as illustrations of the course material, while others may be design projects in which you choose the topic.

Attendance at all laboratory sessions is expected and required. If you have a legitimate reason for missing lab, please see Prof. Kozick as soon as possible to make arrangements for making up the lab session.

Each student should keep a lab notebook for this course, but I will not collect your notebooks for grading. The lab notebook will serve two purposes. First, it is a good way to organize the notes and data that you'll need to prepare the lab report. Second, it provides a good reference for future labs that you can use to remember how to perform certain operations with the instruments.

The lab report requirements will be specified for each lab exercise. The reports will range from a brief summary of your activities to a more comprehensive documentation of your analysis, design, and measurement results.



ABET Course Outcomes:

Please see the ABET link on the course web page.

Tentative Outline:

The ELEC 225 topics will be chosen from chapters 1-5 and 7-9 in the Ulaby/Maharbiz text. Then in ELEC 226 we will study chapters 8-9, 13 (a supplemental chapter on transformers), 5-6, and 10-11.

Chapter 1:
Review of basic electrical quantities, sign conventions, Ohm's Law, power, sources.

Chapter 2:
Kirchhoff's Laws, simple resistor circuits (series, parallel, voltage divider, bridge, Delta-Y).

Chapter 3:
Circuit analysis techniques: node-voltage, mesh-current, Thevenin and Norton equivalents, superposition, maximum power transfer.

Chapter 4:
Operational amplifiers: useful circuits with resistors, finite gain models for op amps.

Chapter 5:
Voltage-current relations for capacitors and inductors.

Chapter 7:
Sinusoidal steady-state circuit analysis; phasors, impedance, frequency-domain circuit analysis, Thevenin and Norton equivalents, node-voltage and mesh-current analysis.

Chapter 8:
Sinusoidal steady-state power.

Chapter 9:
Frequency response, filters, Bode plots.