Linear Circuits

This course is a first introduction to electrical systems. It includes the analysis of circuits including resistors, capacitors, and inductors with DC and AC sources in the time domain and in the frequency domain. Laboratory demonstrations are given to reinforce the concepts learned from the lectures and homework. The course is targeted at people with a scientific or technical background who are not electrical or computer engineers. The coverage is not as deep as a circuits course aimed at electrical engineers. There are a number of physical applications demonstrated in this course that serve to motivate this topic to a wider audience. The course is ideal for someone who wants to gain a basic understanding of electrical circuits, someone who wants to get better intuition for what they have already learned, precocious hobbyists, or for someone who is considering electrical engineering as a career.

This course is broken into five Modules, each having associated homework and a quiz:

Module 1: Background:
Background information on electricity, resistors, and circuit diagrams

Module 2: Resistive Circuits:
Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Law, Resistors in series and in parallel, Systematic Solution Methods, Physical applications, and Lab demos

Module 3: Reactive Circuits: 
Capacitors, Inductors, First and Second Order Differential Equations, RC and RL and RLC circuit steady-state and transient response to a DC source, Physical applications, Lab demos

Module 4: Frequency Analysis:
AC response, Impedance, Transfer functions, Frequency response, Filtering, Applications, Lab demos

Module 5:
Real and reactive power, power factor, transformers

Each module has a quiz associated with it, where the modules that take longer are assigned more credit in grading.  Each week has a homework associated with it that is due at the end of the week.