An electrical conductor is a substance in which the electrons are mobile.

The best conductor at room temperature is pure elemental silver.

Insulators prevent electrical currents from flowing, except possibly in very small amounts.
Ionization is the process where electrical insulators can be forced to carry current.
An insulating material is sometimes called a dielectric.
Resistors are important in electronic circuits because they allow for the control of current flow.
N-Type Semiconductor When most of the charge carriers in a semiconductor are electrons.
P-type Semiconductor - When most of the charge carriers are holes.
The more abundant type of charge carrier is called the majority carrier.
The less abundant kind is known as the minority carrier.
Superconductivity a phenomenon when metals are chilled to extremely low temperatures, they lose practically
all of their resistance, but they never become absolutely perfect.
Conductance is the reciprocal of resistance and is measured in Siemens (S).
Resistors can play any of numerous different roles in electrical and electronic equipment: voltage division,
biasing, current limiting, power dissipation, bleeding off charge, impedance matching.
Current-limiting resistors protects a transistor from needless overheating.
Bleeder resistors are connected across the filter capacitors; drain their stored charge so that servicing the
supply is not dangerous.
Potentiometers produce variable resistance and are made to handle only very low levels of current, at low
voltage.
Rheostats always have inductance, as well as resistance. They share the advantages and disadvantages of fixed
wire-wound resistors. Rheostats are used in high-voltage, high-power applications.
The fundamental unit of sound change is called the decibel (dB).
Primary Cell cant be recharged while Secondary Cell can be recharged.
The energy in a cell or battery depends mainly on its physical size.
Magnitude of a Magnetic Field is measured in units called Webers (Wb ) or Maxwell (Mx). 1 Wb = 108 Mx
The flux density or number of lines per square meter or per square centimeter. A flux density of one Tesla is
equal to one Weber per square meter.
Ampere-turn (At) is a unit of magnetomotive force.
Ferromagnetic is a material that can be permanently magnetized.
Diamagnetic - substances that actually decrease the magnetic flux density.
Retentivity, also sometimes called remanence, is a measure of how well the substance will memorize the
magnetism, and thereby become a permanent magnet.
An oscilloscope is a time-domain instrument that shows a graph of magnitude versus time.
Spectrum Analyzer is a frequency-domain instrument that shows the magnitude as a function of frequency.
Inductors oppose the flow of ac by temporarily storing some of the electrical energy as a magnetic field,
measured in Henry (H).
Mutual inductance can be minimized by using shielded wires and toroidal inductors.
Permeability Tuning - moving the core in and out changes the effective permeability within a coil of wire.
Toroid - donut shaped. The coil is wound over a core having this shape.
Capacitance impedes the flow of ac charge carriers by temporarily storing the energy as an electric field.
Capacitance is directly proportional to the surface area of the conducting plates or sheets. Capacitance is
inversely proportional to the separation between conducting sheets
A material with a high dielectric constant acts to increase capacitance per unit volume
The opposition that the coil offers to ac is called inductive reactance. XL = 2

When ac is placed across a coil, the current lags the voltage in phase.
In a purely reactive circuit, the phase angle is 90 degrees.
The opposition that the set of plates offers to ac is the capacitive reactance. XC gets larger (negatively) as the
1

frequency goes down. XC = 2

When an ac voltage source is placed across a capacitor, current leads the voltage.
A circuit containing resistance and capacitance is called an RC circuit.

Susceptance is symbolized by the capital letter B. It is the reciprocal of reactance. That is, =

Conductance and Susceptance combine to form Admittance, symbolized by the capital letter Y. Admittance is a
complex quantity and represents the ease with which current can flow in an ac circuit. =

Absolute-value impedance is equal to 2 + 2

The power in reactance is Imaginary power.

The ratio of the true power to the VA power, , is called the power factor in an ac circuit.

Resonance is a condition that occurs when capacitive and inductive reactance cancels each other out.

Resonant frequency =

The simplest type of resonant antenna, and the only kind that will be mentioned here, is the center-fed, halfwavelength dipole antenna.
The turns ratio in a transformer is the ratio of the number of turns in the primary, Tp, to the number of turns in

the secondary.

Eddy currents are choked off by breaking up the core into layers, so that currents cannot flow very well in
circles.
Hysteresis loss is the tendency for a core material to be sluggish in accepting a fluctuating magnetic field.
Autotranformer has a single, tapped winding.
Semiconductor - Their versatility lies in the fact that the conductivity can be controlled to produce effects such
as amplification, rectification, oscillation, signal mixing, and switching.
Silicon is the most common semiconductor.
Holes flow the opposite way from electrons because charge carriers are passed from atom to atom.
Doping adding of impurities for a semiconductor material to have the properties needed to work in electronic
components. The impurity added is called dopant.
When an impurity contains an excess of electrons, the dopant is called a donor impurity. A material with a
donor impurity is called an N type semiconductor, because electrons have negative charge.
When an impurity has a deficiency of electrons, the dopant is called an acceptor impurity. A material with an
acceptor impurity is called a P-type semiconductor, because holes have positive charge.
Forward diode voltage - a certain minimum voltage for conduction to occur.
Avalanche Effect - If the reverse bias goes past this critical value, the voltage overcomes the ability of the
junction to prevent the flow of current, and the junction conducts as if it were forward biased.
Peak Inverse Voltage The PIV rating of a diode is the instantaneous inverse, or reverse-bias, voltage that it can
withstand without avalanche taking place.
Rectifier Diode passes current in only one direction. This makes it useful for changing ac to dc.

Parts of Power Supply

1. AC encounters a transformer that steps the voltage either down or up.

2. The ac is rectified, so that it becomes pulsating dc with a frequency of either 60 Hz or 120 Hz.
3. The pulsating dc is filtered, or smoothed out, so that it becomes a continuous voltage having either positive
or negative polarity with respect to ground.
4. The dc voltage might need to be regulated.
The principal disadvantage of a voltage multiplier is poor regulation.
A capacitor in parallel and a choke in series would make the best filter for a power supply.
A current surge takes place when a power supply is first turned on because The filter capacitor(s) must be
initially charged.
A fuse is a piece of soft wire that melts, breaking a circuit if the current exceeds a certain level.
Circuit breakers do the same thing as fuses, except that a breaker can be reset by turning off the power supply,
waiting a moment, and then pressing a button or flipping a switch.
Bleeder resistors of a high ohmic value are connected across each filter capacitor, so that the capacitors will
discharge in a few minutes after the supply is turned off.
The word TRANSISTOR is a contraction of current-TRANSferring reSIStor.
NPN Transistor - The P-type, or center, layer is called the base. The thinner of the N-type semiconductors is the
emitter, and the thicker is the collector.
PNP Transistor - having two P-type layers, one on either side of a thin, N-type layer. The emitter layer is thinner,
in most units, than the collector layer.
A bipolar transistor has three semiconductor layers.
Zero Bias - Suppose that the base isnt connected to anything, or is at the same potential as the emitter.
Saturation - When a transistor is conducting as much as it possibly can.
The greatest possible amplification is obtained in a common-emitter circuit.
Two main types of FET: the junction FET (JFET) and the metal-oxide FET (MOSFET).
The gate of FET controls the flow of charge carriers by means of an electric field, rather than via an electric
current.
Pinchoff when the gate becomes negative enough, the depletion region will completely obstruct the flow of
charge carriers.
The gate of a JFET has high impedance.