From: Henry
Hello Mr. Cutcher,
Firstly let me tell you how much I'm enjoying your book! I'm learning
so much and it's filling in all these gaps in my head regarding electronic
circuits. I'd taken some classes on electronic circuits when I was a teen,
but much of that has long since escaped my brain. You succinctly and clearly
describe everything that's going on in each lesson without over simplifying
the concepts.
I'm up to lesson 28 and 29, but it looks like the edition that I
have is missing the latter half of lesson 29. I'm getting ready to build
the oscilloscope probe in lesson 28. The last sentence in lesson says that
the scope probe will be used in lesson 29, but lesson 29 goes for a page
and a half, and then there's a page and a half of blank space, and then
lesson 30. There's no mention of using the probe or the oscilloscope software!
Am I missing half of lesson 29? If so, is there anywhere on the web where
I can download the missing text?
Thanks for your time and congratulations on a great book!
Best regards, Henry
WOW! I just took a quick look at that. Yes,
it does appear that something is missing. And better yet, I can't blame
the publishers. That appears to be my mistake. I know why I missed it as
well. I do this small part with my students on real scopes. So they missed
the opportunity to catch that error of omission.
My intent was
to revisit question #9 on Page 90. That would give a person a visual of
what is happening in the circuit when the oscillation is faster than what
the DMM can follow. You can probably figure that one out by yourself. Don't
wait for me. The black clip to ground and the red clip to a wire from the
output at pin 10. Do this without anything else connected to pin 10. Then
do it with the speaker. Then with the transistor and speaker in place.
You will see how the load (the speaker) actually changes the shape of the
signal.
I could easily
fill in the rest of page 103.
Also, the probe works only on AC. As you will
see, the slower the oscillation, the crappier the signal appears. This
is because the sound card is protected from outside current by a coupling
capacitor (Part IV, lesson 53 pg 209) . And yes, it is a very thin application
for all the work put into making the scope probe. But it is used extensively
in Part IV. As well, though I don't direct people to do so, I expect they
will use the probe as they poke around in Part III.
Dave C.
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