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Here is the proposed outline for the Part 1 course. I will making additions/changes based upon the feedback that you, the students, have given me in the survey.

Electricity

• Introduction to electricity and electrical safety, introduction to electronics
• Conductor, insulator, resistor, volts, amps, watts
• Ohms law
• Resistors – we’ll make one
• Series/parallel circuits
  • Simple resistor circuit, introduction to schematic diagrams
  • What’s a short circuit?
• Capacitors – make one
• Diodes & LED’s
• Breadboards & build 555 timer flashing light. Tone generator, then use capacitor and variable resistor you build
• Inductors – we’ll build one. We’ll use this later for detecting metals with a voltage divider
  • relays and flyback voltage, protecting circuits with a reverse biased diode
• tank circuits & resonance
• Crystals
• Transistors
  • principle
  • switching transistors
• PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)
  • What is it?
  • Build a motor speed controller using 555 and transistor and DC motor
• Servo motors
  • how they work
  • PWM control
  • position and speed servos motors
  • build a servo driver PWM circuit
• Voltage Dividers
• Transistors – audio gain or linear gain
  • feedback and amplifying gain
• Transistor load hogging
• Transistor types
  • MOSFET
  • MOSFET’s can be put in parallel easily
  • subject to static electricity
• H-bridge for controlling DC motors
• Dual power supplies and ground
• OP Amps
  • gain/feedback
  • differential amps
• biofeedback
  • making electrical pads
  • making conductive gel
• Build a muscle sensing differential amp
• opto sensors:
  • spoke sensors for speed and position
  • reflective for proximity
  • break beam (build a catburglar alarm?)

Power Supplies

• Transformers
  • principle
  • math & physics involved
• building your own power supplies
• pre-built power supplies: wall warts, computer power supplies (jump with a load to get it to turn on)
• DC to AC conversion
• 7805 voltage regulator
• DC-AC inverter
• 386 audio amplifier circuit (guitar or microphone amp)
• RGB LED mood light

Recycling electronics