Circuits course: Table of Contents

This page collects all the blog posts for the development of my Applied Circuits for Bioengineers course.  The material distributed to the students in the course for the first offering of the course is on my University web pages:

http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus/bme194/w13/

Because WordPress.com has an irrational prejudice against allowing oldest-first ordering of anything (or incompetent database programmers, which seems less likely), I’ve had to hand-create a table of contents for my posts about the Circuits Course. I would really love for them to have automatically generated “Table of Contents” summary pages for each category, giving the links to the posts and (optionally) the tags associated with the post.  Until they realize that not every reader and writer of blogs sees posts as being primarily valued by how recent they are, I’ll have to make do with this hand-generated table of contents (and remember to edit it every time I have a new post!):

1. Changing teaching plans
2. More on electronics course design
3. Yet another project idea
4. More musings on circuits course: temperature lab
5. Buying parts for circuits course
6. Oscilloscope practice lab
7. Speakers and function generator
8. Temperature lab, part2
9. Temperature lab, part 3: voltage divider
10. Op-amp lab
11. Why teach circuits to bioengineers?
12. What sensors for circuits class?
13. Instrumentation amp lab
14. Instrumentation amp, try 2
15. Building a function generator kit
16. Capacitive sensing
17. Capacitive sensing, part 2
18. Capacitive sensing with op amps
19. Capacitive sensing with op amps, continued
20. Phototransistor
21. Synchronous demodulator
22. EMG and EKG works
23. Two-stage EKG
24. EKG recording working
25. Pulse detection with light
26. Giving up on light-based pulse sensor
27. More thoughts on EKG
28. Looking at bioengineering measurements courses
29. Cockroach electronics?
30. Random thoughts on circuits labs
31. EKG blinky
32. Instrumentation amp protoboard
33. Instrumentation amp protoboard rev2.1
34. Trying to measure ionic current through small holes
35. Medical Instrumentation, first 5 chapters
36. Accelerometer for circuits course?
37. Medical Instrumentation, chapter 6
38. Conductivity of saline solution
39. On stainless steel
40. EKG blinky boards arrived
41. More free textbooks
42. Better measurement of conductivity of saline solution
43. Measuring Ag/AgCl electrodes
44. Order and topics for labs
    This post is a good one to start with, as it outlines the labs I’ve developed so far in the order we’ll probably do them and provides pointers to other posts about each lab.  There are no pointers to later posts, of course.
45. EKG blinky boards work
46. EKG blinky parts list and assembly instructions (Page, not Post)
47. Instrumentation amp prototyping boards arrived
48. Medical Instrumentation, Chapters 7 and 8
49. Medical Instrumentation, Chapters 9–14
50. Better electrode placement for EKG blinky
51. Possible textbook, Horowitz and Hill
52. EMG video
53. All about circuits, a possible supplemental text
54. Pressure sensing lab possibilities
55. Wikipedia books, another approach for a free/cheap textbook
56. PC board for pressure sensor
57. Making Ag/AgCl electrodes
58. Course approval forms
59. Supplemental sheet for lab, draft 1 This post is obsolete, see draft 2 below.
60. Supplemental sheet for lecture, draft 1
61. Characterizing tactile transducer
62. Characterizing tactile transducer again
63. Bad news for circuits course
64. Good news for circuits course
65. New amplifier and shaker table
66. Supplemental sheets, draft 2 This post provides an updated overview of the course, but no links to other posts.
67. Filing the paperwork
68. SBG and partner work in circuits class
69. Circuits course as flipped Bloom’s
70. Good and bad news for circuit course
71. Pressure sensor assembly
72. Pressure sensor miswired
73. A way forward for circuit course
74. Pressure sensor noise problems
75. Rethinking the pressure sensor lab
76. Thinking about PC boards and parts kits for circuits lab
77. New PC board design for pressure sensor
78. A different way forward for circuit course
79. Notes for things to do on circuits course
80. Capacitive sensing with Schmitt trigger
81. Hysteresis lab
82. Parts list for Applied Circuits W13, draft 1 (Page, not Post)
83. New holder design for Ag/AgCl electrodes
84. Holder for Ag/AgCl electrodes
85. Updated things to do on circuits course
86. Pressure sensor boards arrived
87. Hysteresis board
88. Small enrollment in circuits course
89. Parts orders for Applied Circuits W13 (Page, not Post)
90. Tested Python and Arduino installation
91. Trying the oscilloscope practice lab
92. FET threshold tests with Bitscope
93. Disappointing power-amp lab
94. Three lab handout drafts done
95. Mic modeling lab too complicated
96. Tools and parts list for Applied Circuits W13 (Page, not Post)  This page has the packing list (and prices) for the student tools-and-parts kit.  It looks like the kits will be $65 for Winter 2013.
97. Parts packed, pressure sensors assembled, more thoughts on power amp
98. Mic modeling lab rethought
99. Data logging software for circuits course working
100. FET modeling lab looking complicated
101. Class D instead of class AB
102. Class D works
103. Parts and tools packaged today
104. Updating to-do list
105. More mess in the FET modeling lab
106. Negative resistance oscillator
107. First day of circuits class went ok
108. More stuff bought for the circuits class
109. Second day of circuits class
110. First lab was too long
111. Third day of circuits class
112. Fourth day of circuits class
113. Weekend work
114. Fifth day of circuits class
115. Second lab was smoother than the first
116. Sixth day of circuits class
117. Doing the hysteresis lab without a scope
118. Seventh day of circuits class
119. Electrode lab went well
120. Eighth day of circuits class
121. Virtual Community of Practice for circuits
122. Ninth day of circuits class
123. Teaching engineering thinking
124. Formal reasoning in intro physics
125. Tenth day of circuits class
126. First soldering lab went fairly well
127. Eleventh  day of circuits course
128. Idea for phototransistor/FET lab
129. Conjecture about gnuplot difficulties for students
130. Quiz too long and too hard
131. Positive moments
132. Thirteenth day of circuit class and first op-amp lab
133. Fourteenth day of circuits class
134. Becoming engineers
135. RC time constant lab
136. Fifteenth day of circuits class
137. Descaffolding
138. Sixteenth day of circuits class
139. Tinkering lab
140. Seventeenth day of circuits class: inductors and gnuplot tutorial
141. Teaching students to build and use models
142. All weekend and handouts still not written
143. Pressure-sensor lab handout written
144. Eighteenth day of circuits class
145. Sampling lab went ok
146. Nineteenth day of circuits class
147. Class D with LC filter works
148. Tinkering lab reports show problems
149. Twentieth day of circuits class
150. Better model for loudspeaker
151. Twenty-first day of circuits class
152. Pressure-sensor lab went well
153. Rethinking the power-amp lab again
154. Rethinking the power-amp lab yet again
155. Quiz 2, better than quiz 1
156. Twenty-second day of circuits class (actually 23rd, I forgot to count the quiz day)
157. Twenty-third day of circuits class  (actually 24th)
158. Class-D power amp lab went smoothly
159. Twenty-fifth day of circuits class
160. Twenty-sixth day of circuits class
161. Exploding electrolytic capacitors
162. Tried EKG design on protoboard
163. Action potential lecture and EKG lab
164. Twenty-eighth day of circuits class
165. Last day of circuits class
166. Bar exam for circuits class
167. Student writing
168. Triangle-wave oscillator
169. Self-taught teacher
170. Supplemental sheets, draft 3
171. Showing is better than telling, but not by much

I should probably annotate every listing above with a sentence or two about what is in the post, as well as collecting posts into separate thematic groups below.