Moving Electrons
Around for Fun and Profit
(Physics/Electrical Engineering /Computer Engineering)
All these electronic gadgets we use—someone had to figure out how to make them from scratch. Was there an underlying idea? Yes, there was: electrons. Just move them where you want them to go and they can do marvelous things for you. How do you control where they go? You use the basic building block of modern electrical circuitry, the transistor (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1956), and its follow-on, the integrated circuit (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2000). After understanding how the transistor works, we are going to build most of the digital electrical circuitry used in a computer, including circuits that make decisions, add, count, store information, and make LEDs light up in revealing patterns.
Around for Fun and Profit
(Physics/Electrical Engineering /Computer Engineering)
All these electronic gadgets we use—someone had to figure out how to make them from scratch. Was there an underlying idea? Yes, there was: electrons. Just move them where you want them to go and they can do marvelous things for you. How do you control where they go? You use the basic building block of modern electrical circuitry, the transistor (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1956), and its follow-on, the integrated circuit (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2000). After understanding how the transistor works, we are going to build most of the digital electrical circuitry used in a computer, including circuits that make decisions, add, count, store information, and make LEDs light up in revealing patterns.