In this lecture, we're going to start

with some of the fundamentals of

electronics.
The first idea that will be introduced is
that of electric charge.
And we'll introduce the Coloum's Law,
which enables you to compute the force
between electric charges.
With the idea of electric charge, we can
then go on to discuss moving charges or
currents in circuits.
Then building on Coulomb's law, we can
introduce the idea of the electric field.
And from there, we can introduce the
notion of voltage or electric potential
difference.
With these basic ideas behind us, we can
then talk about the first simple circuit
elements, resistors, which obey Ohm's
Law.
Then after introducing another very
simple circuit element, a battery, we can
go on to start using what are called
Kirchoff's Laws which are really based on
conservation principles.
But they offer us methods for finding the
voltage and current at any point in a
network of batteries and resistors or,
later on, more complicated circuit
elements.
Then, once we have the basic circuit
elements and a method for analyzing
circuits, we'll start to look at a few
specific examples.
And particular series and parallel
combinations of resistors.
And voltage and current dividers, which
are important circuits in audio
applications.
Okay, we're going to start by talking
about electric charge.
Now, electric charge was recognized quite
a while ago.
The, it's existence was recognized a long
time ago.
And in 1783 Coulomb wrote down Coulomb's
Law, which tells you the force between 2
electric charges of charge q1 and q2
separated by a distance r.
And those quantities charge is measured
in coulomb's and the distance if that's
in meters this constant is about 9 times
10 to the 9th Newton meter squared per
Coulomb squared.
And so just to remind you, one Newton is
the force required to accelerate 1
kilogram by an amount of 1 meter per
second squared.
And that comes from Newton's second law.
So that means if I take a 1 kilogram

mass, and I press with the force of one

Newton, it will be accelerated by one
meter per second squared.
Now, the reason we're introducing the
idea of force here, is that you can
really understand the amount of charge in
terms of force, which is something you
can measure.
and the way you measure force is by
letting it act on a certain mass.
And then you can measure the
acceleration.
So this is something that you can
directly measure with stopwatches and
meter sticks.
And that's a physical thing you can go on
the web and measure.
So the idea of force is is kind of
derived from from that.
But then, from the problem here is
understanding charge which is kind of a,
a an unusual concept.
It's kind of hard to put your hands on,
but it's really understood in terms of
the amount of force between charged
particles.
So, going back to Coulomb's Law, here's,
imagine we do an experiment, where we
take two, what are called puff balls.
Which are the they used to use the
insides of, vegetable matter.
Because, it was very, very light material
that would hold charge.
Now, these days you would probably just
use a piece of Styrofoam.
But if you take a a small piece of
material and you supported by a thread,
and you put some charge, say like charge,
on two of these things.
Then they will repel each other with, the
electric force, Coulomb force.
And from measuring this angle, you can
figure out how much force is between
these and then that defines the amount of
charge these two objects.
Now a charge can be plus or minus.
And the rule is that like charges repel,
and opposite charges attract.
Now you can perhaps from high school,
they used a glass rod and a piece of silk
cloth.
And you could rub the glass rod with the
silk cloth and that would leave the glass
rod, I think, I believe positively
charged.
Or the other alternative is you take a
ebonite rod, sort of the material bowling
balls used to be made out of, and you rub
it with a piece of rabbits fur.
And that generates a negative charge.

And so you can generate static charge and

move it around with displays its presence
using an electrometer, which is
essentially objects that hold charge.
And then you can see their repulsion.
but so, just to give you a feeling for
how much charge one Coulomb is.
If I were to take one Coulomb of charge
on two objects, separate them by 1 meter,
then plug that on.
This is 1, that's 1, that's 1 squared.
So the force is this constant 8.988 times
10 to the 9th newtons.
Now that's a huge amount of force.
If you sit down and you calculate that,
that would be enough force to levitate
about 5,000 locomotives, each weighing
200 tons.
So, a Coulomb is one heck of a lot of
charge.
So, at this point charge, as far as we're
concerned, so far, charge is really just
a, you can think of it as sort of a
fluid.
It wasn't until 1897 that J.J.
Thompson that charge actually comes in
small units or corpuscles that eventually
became known as electrons.
And it's interesting to bring that up
because the experimental setup that he
used to, to come to those conclusions is
kind of a precursor of modern day vacuum
tubes.
Now, it wasn't until about ten years
later than Millikan discovered, or
measured, the charge of a single
electron.
So they knew that these corpuscles
existed but it took some very careful
experiments by Millikan to actually
measure the amount of charge.
And it turns out that one electron has a
charge that is 1.6 times 10 to the minus
19 Coulombs.
If I take one over that number, it turns
out that one Coulomb is equivalent to 6.2
times 10 to the 18th electrons.
So that is a lot of electrons in one
Coulomb.
So here's the first problem I'd like you
to solve.
So, you know, when you unpack something
wrapped in styrofoam peanuts they stick
to everything you can't put them down,
they stick to your hands and your
clothing.
And so the question is, how many
electrons would you have to put on a
styrofoam peanut that's one cubic
centimeter in size so it would be picked

up by your hand from a distance from 5

centimeters.
So we're going to assume that the
styrofoam peanut in your hand both have
the same amount of charge on them but
they have opposite signs so they attract.
Now, here's a few numbers you're going to
need, the density of styrofoam is about
0.035 grams per cubic centimeter.
And the Earth's gravitational
acceleration, if you didn't know it, is
9.8 liters per second squared.
So, here's the picture of what's
happening, here's your force, here's your
hand, and we'll assume there's a positive
charge on your hand and a negative charge
on the styrofoam peanut.
And there's going to be a Coulomb force
that attracts the negative charge to the
positive charge.
And, lets say that your hand is 5
centimeters, a couple of inches above the
peanut.
The peanut has a mass given by m.
The force of gravity is mg, and so for
your hand, for the Coulomb force to
exceed the gravitational force, I want
you to calculate how much charge has to
be on these two objects.
And here are the answers to choose from.
Okay, now that we've introduced the idea
of electric charge, we're going to talk
about electrical current.
Now just as a a starting point and an
aside more or less.
for all of the kinds of circuits we're
going to look at, it's really not
important that charge is made up of
discrete corpuscles or discrete
particles.
And we're going to treat charge and the
currents as, really, more of a fluid
that's infinitesimally divisible.
Now, also, as just to establish some
background, a negative charge corresponds
to there being a surplus of electrons.
So when I put a, a negatively charged
packing peanut, there are more electrons
on that in a piece of material than there
are positively charged protons making up
the entire piece of material.
And when I have a, a positive charge,
that really corresponds to a deficit to
electrons.
So electrons are the things that move
around in a circuit and when I'm
transferring static charge for the most
part.
But the when I have additional electrons,
or excess electrons, that's negative

charge.
When I have a deficit of electrons,
that's a positive charge.
Okay, so now to current.
So imagine I have a wire, and I look at a
cross sectional area of this wire.
And I define a direction coming out of
the page, that I'm, I'm going to call the
positive direction.
And current I, which is measured in
amperes, is defined as the amount of
charge crossing this cross sectional area
per second.
And one ampere corresponds to one Coulomb
of charge per second passing through this
surface in this positive direction that
I've, I've, it's, it's up to us how we
define which direction is positive.
But, here it is.
Plus 1 amp, is 1 Coulomb of positive
charge moving along the positive
direction.
Now, the, that's what I just said, the
plus current corresponds to positive
charge moving in the direction that we've
chosen to be positive, indicated by the
arrow.
So, just to make this more clear,
hopefully, let's say we pick some
direction going to the right as the
positive direction.
So our, our x axis is, is, increasing,
moving to the right.
So if I move positive charge in the
positive direction, that corresponds to a
plus current value.
If I move negative charge in the
direction that's defined to be positive.
That's actually negative current, a
negative number of amperes.
if I move positive charge opposite the
direction that I've defined to be
positive that corresponds to a negative
current.
And if I move negative charge opposite
the direction that I've defined to be
positive.
That's a positive current.
So what's happening in a real wire if I
say I have one ampere coming out of this
wire.
That really means that there is one
Coulomb per second of negative charge
moving in the opposite direction.
so what it means when I say that I have
one ampere of current coming out of this
wire is that I have actually one Coulomb
per second of negative charge moving into
the wire.
So one ampere coming out of the wire

means there is one Coulomb of negative

charge going opposite the, that
direction.