What is the purpose of the course “Holistic Circuitry, A Practial Approach”?
First, is to learn a scientific learning method that conforms to the laws of human cognition.
Secondly, is to learn circuits with a clear target. For example, do you want to make a counter that will increment when it receives a clap? Do you want to create your very own volume bar that jumps when hearing noise? How about determine the direction of the noise? We have many interesting circuits prepared to help you have a comprehensive understanding of the circuit and its components.
Finally, we want to cultivate learners' meticulous thinking habits and hand-eye coordination. Various issue will arise in the process of circuit debugging. To analyze them, one must have a clear understanding and a logical mind for reasoning and critical thinking. These will be skills to develop on top of just electronics.
What is the difference between THIS course and common circuit courses?
Common circuit textbooks and courses have similarities: these textbooks and courses are built from the small knowledge points of this subject, and then try to let the learners synthesize the whole picture of this subject through the accumulation of knowledge points. You can arbitrarily choose 10 electronic textbooks to see if this is the case. But this is incomplete. The information contained in any one whole is much greater than the sum of the information contained in each part, especially in electronic circuits. There is information exchange, logical inheritance and energy flows between each part. In such a process of rounding to zero, the connections between the various parts are weakened or even broken. At the end of the course, there is an overall working circuit. The learner is likely to forget the part knowledge previously learned. Even if the learner with good memory remembers the part knowledge, it is difficult to understand the organic connection between the parts, which leads to that the majority of learners are unable to understand the overall circuit, thus drawing the conclusion that the circuit is difficult to learn.
In this course, 15 complete sets of circuits are prepared for imitation and learning development. With the project based learning method, You can learn electronic technology efficiently. Read FAQ for more infomation.
Q1:score, test and certificate
A1:
The qualification certificate must be more than 60 points, and the excellent certificate must be more than 80 points.
Score synthesis: objective choice questions account for 80%. Except for the first Chapter, there are objective multiple-choice questions after each class. The total number of questions completed by learners is about 120. If they are all right and submitted on time, the system will automatically convert the score to 80, three attempts, encourage students to experiment while answering questions.
The final examination accounting for 20% of the total score. It is an objective multiple choice question, with a total of 10 questions.
Q2: Can I learn critical thinking by studying this course?
A2:The essence of critical thinking is to rethink the thinking process and pick the fault from oneself. It is internal seeking. Such students are often encountered in the teaching, who bury their heads to complete the circuit. When the expected results have not gotten with a curl of smoke rising, they sought the help of teacher, and even suspected that the circuit was wrong. This is lack of critical thinking. They gave up the process of improving thinking on their own.
This course has an imitation part in the course design. Through video demonstration, it shows the correct operation results of the circuit, and convinces the students that the circuit principle is correct at the same time. Any failures are caused by errors in the experiment, which forcing students to find problems from themselves, thereby making them learn critical thinking.
Q3: What is the difference between THIS course and common circuit courses?
A3: Common circuit textbooks and courses have similarities: these textbooks and courses are built from the small knowledge points of this subject, and then try to let the learners synthesize the whole picture of this subject through the accumulation of knowledge points. You can arbitrarily choose 10 electronic textbooks to see if this is the case. But this is incomplete. The information contained in any one whole is much greater than the sum of the information contained in each part, especially in electronic circuits. There is information exchange, logical inheritance and energy flows between each part. In such a process of rounding to zero, the connections between the various parts are weakened or even broken. At the end of the course, there is an overall working circuit. The learner is likely to forget the part knowledge previously learned. Even if the learner with good memory remembers the part knowledge, it is difficult to understand the organic connection between the parts, which leads to that the majority of learners are unable to understand the overall circuit, thus drawing the conclusion that the circuit is difficult to learn.
The characteristics of this course are: 1. The experiment are prioritized. Each project begins with the experiment. The learner makes a working circuit module that has meaning; 2. Explain the meaning of the complete working circuit and device composition of this project. By the way, learn about the characteristics of the device in this circuit; 3. Learn the knowledge you need to use, do not artificially specify the order of knowledge points to serve this project; 4. Use simplified models or even cartoons to help you understand the circuit.
Learners are required to be familiar with Ohm's law, and prepare at least basic experimental equipment, such as digital multimeters, breadboards and basic components. The total price of these things is more than 100 yuan. The better the equipment is, the more things you learn. As an old Chinese saying goes, if you want to do good work, you must first sharpen your tools. It will be better to equip with digital storage oscilloscope, DDS fully synthesized digital signal source and adjustable regulated power supply.
Q4: The legendary that Analog Electronic Technology Courses are difficult and they are dubbed as "magic electricity". I was a little scared before learning. Is that true?
A4: If a technology is considered difficult to learn, there is no more than the following reasons. First of all, the method of learning this technology is wrong, which means acting in a way that defeats your purpose. Second, the learners have insufficient motivation to learn it well, and then they will say the course is difficult to push away the responsibility. Third, students don’t know what they can do after learning these with no purpose. Fourth, it is really difficult, exceeding the cognitive ability of a particular learner.
As for the learning method, if driving schools all over China lock the learners to learn theory and do not allow them to practice driving, everyone will think that driving is difficult. Therefore, everyone should follow the correct method to yield twice the result with half the effort. The motivation for learning is not under the control of the teacher. I hope this interesting arrangement of the course allows learners to know what to do and what electronic technology can do, to maintain a strong interest and motivation. Therefore, it is hoped that the learners can set the goal of learning, not earning credits but learning real skills. So please do some experiments to see if it exceeds your cognitive ability?
Q5: Mr. Mao often uses learning to drive or learning the mother tongue for infants to analogize learning circuits. Does it make sense?
A5: Learning to drive or learning language for young children, including our learning of electronic circuits are all human cognitive activities, which are inherently common and are the process by which humans master practical knowledge skills. Imagine that our parents teach phonetic symbols, grammar, words to our children, and then teach sentences based on grammar. Will the children go crazy? Or we go to the driving school to learn about driving, and the masters shut us up in the classroom to explain the internal structure of the engine, the operating principles and specifications of the clutch. Can we drive after learning for a semester? Similarly, we study transistors or MOSFETs, which are ready to be used. How the internal carriers move is temporarily irrelevant to us.
But in many colleges and universities, students take one-semester theory course, and then take one-semester experiment course. Doing experiment after a few classes in some colleges is a little better. Is this similar to the story I just told about driving in the classroom?
Practice has proved that letting children learn language in the language environment without being limited to grammar and phonetic symbols or letting learners learn to drive while driving are methods that conform to human cognitive habits. Learning electronic technology is the mastering of circuit language (circuit diagrams, waveforms, etc.) and the manipulation of electronic circuits. Of course, it is necessary to learn while experimenting.
Q6: What is the purpose of the course “Holistic Circuitry, A Practial Approach”?
A6: First, learn a scientific learning method that conforms to the laws of human cognition.
Secondly, learn circuits with a target, and do a good job in the interface of natural analog signals. For example, let the produced circuit hear the clapping sound and the counter will increase by one at the same time. Or the sound intensity of the nature is displayed by the brightness of the LED bar. Or determine whether a sound comes from the left or right side of the system and so on. After making these electronic circuits, you will have a comprehensive understanding of this circuit.
Third, cultivate learners' meticulous thinking habits and hand-eye coordination. Various faults will appear in the process of circuit debugging. To analyze these faults, the principle must be clearly understood, and logical reasoning must be carried out.
Q7: How to learn this course well?
A7: First of all, deeply understand "learning a scientific learning method that conforms to the laws of human cognition" mentioned in the purpose of the course. Carefully recall your mental journey when learning a mother tongue or how to drive a car, which helps to understand the learning method. Invite several like-minded students to study together.
Second, establish a small goal that can be achieved, for example, to understand the principle of transistor man model. You can refer to our project settings. With goals, there will be efficiency in doing things. The introduction of the transistor is only one page with one picture. It is estimated that it can be read in 3 minutes. It may take 30 minutes or more for you to understand them and make the experiment successfully. If you don’t understand, read it several times and discuss with classmates. According to my teaching experience, despite the micro-teaching video, I have repeated the principle of transistor man model a hundred times. Therefore, study should be careful.
Third, cultivate learners' meticulous thinking habits and hand-eye coordination. In the classroom, we put forward the debugging principle of breaking up the whole into parts, advancing gradually and entrenching oneself at every step, and doubting everything. It is required students to divide a larger circuit into small modules that they fully understand, and to ensure that the small modules are normal, and then connect with other normal small modules until the entire circuit is completed. After cultivating this habit of thinking, life will be better.
Last but not least, many learners have such a learning obstacle, that is, they clearly understand the circuit, but there is no way to connect the three pins of the transistor correctly on the breadboard. Our teaching experience shows that you’d better imitate first. Our courseware contains HD photos and videos of circuit that is correctly connected to run. You should follow suit, that is, imitate and then create. You know, children learn to talk by imitating first. It is recommended to imitate a simple circuit with few devices first, and then make a larger one. Some of our students started to connect a simple circuit with only two transistors, and they did it for more than ten hours. Once they crossed this threshold, the experiment speed became fast. In the first ten hours or so, students broke the inherent thinking habits and reflected on the learning methods, and new habits were formed with great gains.
Q8: What is the main content of "Holistic Circuitry, A Practial Approach"?
A8: The main content of this course is the introduction of analog electronic technology and digital electronic technology. Let me talk about analog electronic technology first: the simulation here is not to imitate anything. Analog electronic is a word, which means that electrical signals are continuous in both dimensions of time and amplitude. Look at various parameters in nature, such as temperature, speed, pressure, gravity, flow, acceleration, etc. which are signals that continuously change in time and amplitude. These parameters will not change from one value to another without time. These parameters are converted into electrical signals by suitable electronic equipment, and these electrical signals will reflect changes in nature. Obviously, these electrical signals are also continuous, so they are analog electronic signals. As long as we need to get in touch with the real nature, we will inevitably need analog circuits, so analog circuit designers are needed. Let’s see examples:
The CPU processes digital signals. But it has no way to monitor its own temperature with digital circuits. This interface will always be an analog interface. Specifically, it is a temperature sensor and analog signal processing circuit. The temperature sensor is a resistor that changes resistance with temperature. Then the analog signal processing circuit designed by the engineer can sense the temperature change by measuring this resistance. If the temperature exceeds the set value, (The comparator in the analog circuit is required here) it will output a voltage signal, and then amplify this signal to drive the fan to cool the CPU.
Advanced CPUs require very precise operating voltage. For example, it is 1.000V. Think about it, how to reach this 1.000V? There is no way to reach it with digital circuits. We need a regulated power supply for analog electronic circuits. When you swiped on your phone screen, how can your phone know you swiped? There must be an analog circuit in your mobile phone that analyzes the inductive capacitance of the human body.
We cannot do without analog circuits. Analog circuits are like your eyes, ears, mouth, nose, hands and feet. The digital circuit part of the course is like the brain, which counts, logically judges, and stores.
The overall circuit experiment that can realize various functions arranged according to a certain rule in the course reflects the practicality of the course. Learners make imitation experiments, think about problems, discuss together, and strive to master the basic ideas of electronic technology.
Q9: Is it true that learning this course just need a basic knowledge of Ohm's Law? This is what we have learned in junior high school.
A9: Yes. If you haven’t learned Ohm ’s Law yet, it’s easy to learn right now. Learn the knowledge when you need to use it, which is the characteristic of our course. In addition, the characteristics of the equipment in the electronic circuit, the waveform of the oscilloscope, etc. are expressed in the plane rectangular coordinate system, which seems to be the content of the junior high school. I hope that the learners have a deep understanding of them.
According to our experience in class, the expression of Ohm's law on the plane rectangular coordinate system makes many students who think they are proficient in Ohm's law and the plane rectangular coordinate system feel confused. For example, in a coordinate system where the ordinate is current and the abscissa is voltage, how to represent a 0 ohm’ resistance that is equivalent to a wire, or an infinite resistance (open circuit)? These require learners to quickly establish relationships and use them proficiently during the experiment. Remember, ability is the ability to use knowledge. It is the performance of inability when you have a lot of knowledge in the brain without knowing how to use it.
Q10: How to take an exam? Will we don’t know how to do the exam by only making experiments?
A10: Every time something wrong appears in the experiment, it is a good question, and the answer is in your meter. On your experiment board, you don’t need anyone to give you the correct answer. When you see the light beam flash, the LED start to breath or hear the small horn sound, the satisfaction you get is unmatched by doing exercises. Think more when doing experiments, such as “Why did the teacher design this circuit this way?”, “what would I do if I wanted to design it yourself?”. When you put yourself in the position of a designer, those questions can't have you stumped anymore. Refer to Q2.
Q11: Can you disclose objective questions?
A11: We have requirements for every operational project: understand the function of the circuit, draw the entire circuit diagram from memory, remember the parameters of all the devices in the circuit, and understand the reaction of the circuit when a certain parameter changes. There are only a dozen devices of the circuit generally. All of our questions are due to the response of the overall circuit after the parameter of a certain device changes. Everyone intends to make a change in the device to understand the reaction of the circuit during the experiment, and then you can naturally finish the exercise.
Therefore, learning this course also requires the ability to solve problems. When your circuit have faults, you must calmly list all possible causes and eliminate them one by one. If you have not ruled out the fault, you must have a dead end in your thinking. If you have not considered all the possibilities, try again from the beginning. Consequently, study this course well and exercise your thinking ability meanwhile.
I often encounter such students in the teaching, who bury their heads to complete the circuit. When the expected results have not gotten with a curl of smoke rising, they sought the help of teacher. They gave up the process of improving thinking on their own. I recommend the students connect a small module that you can understand, then debug and pass, and then connect the next module again. This means advancing gradually and entrenching oneself at every step.
Q12. Will we like this course?
A12: According to our experience in teaching and circuit design for many years, lots of students like electronic products first, and then plan to study hard. There are also a large number of students who have established interest after taking courses, because the electronic technology course is technical course. Its learning effect is immediate and can be used right after learning, especially after experimenting seriously and understanding the principle totally. Although students will encounter difficulties and challenges in the process of learning and practice, the sense of accomplishment and happiness is fascinating after the successful experiment.
Q13: How to understand engineering analysis methods?
A13: In layman's terms, the engineering analysis method is the most concise and effective approximate analysis method. When the error is acceptable, the engineering analysis method can simplify complex problems. For example, when analyzing an amplification circuit, the amplification factor obtained by circuit analysis theory and computer-aided calculation analysis method is 101.50, and the calculation obtained by engineering analysis method is 100. Such engineering analysis result is acceptable.
During the engineering analysis process, some parameters in the equivalent models of diodes, transistors, and Field Effect Transistor of semiconductor devices are negligible under certain conditions. However, you need to consider that under what circumstances it can be ignored, and under what conditions it needs to be retained. Students understand these prerequisites during the learning process, and can use device models proficiently. The most important device models in our course are the transistor man model and the two golden rules of Operational Amplifier.
Q14: Why do many students think that electronic technology is difficult to learn?
A14: The reason why many people think electronic technology is difficult to learn is that children are taught to learn simple things before learning complex one, or learn part knowledge before learning whole knowledge, starting from elementary school, or even earlier. As a result, our children gradually lose their ability and thinking habits to understand things from the overall perspective, so they are gradually confined to narrow cognitive range, giving up the ability to break out of their thinking barriers and explore new knowledge. This also greatly limits your opportunities to quickly improve your learning ability through actual application scenarios, circuit environments or computer language environments.
Whether you are learning to speak, computer language, or circuit language, you must get used to learning in an environment that clearly exceeds your comprehension ability, and use a variety of understanding tools (not just limited to text understanding). It is the most effective way to improve your level of various languages. Just like the newly born infants, in the face of extremely complex adult language, they mobilized all their body and mind to understand. As a result, they learn at an amazing speed. Why not use this ability of learning mother tongue to learn second language, computer language and circuit language?