I realized in doing the homework grading this weekend that few of the students in my electronics course had any intuitive understanding of semilog plots (that is, plots in which one axis is linear and the other logarithmic). I had been assuming that providing the following plot
Forward voltage as a function of current for a 1N914BTR diode.
would let students see that the voltage grows approximately with the logarithm of the current, and that means that a voltage difference corresponds to a current ratio. Very few students got that from the picture, the formulas, or the description in the text. They almost all wanted to pretend that the diode was a linear device with voltage proportional to current (i.e., that it was a resistor), so that a 6% change in current would result in a 6% change in voltage. The whole point of using the diode was to introduce the exponential non-linearity, so this confusion definitely needs to be cleared up.
I was going to try to explain semilog plots and exponential/logarithmic relationships in class today, but my cold has gotten so bad that I had to cancel class today. That means I have another 2 days to figure out how to explain the concepts. If any of my readers can think of ways to get students to interpret semilog plots correctly, please let me know. I think that the relationships are too obvious to me for me to help students past their misunderstandings—I can’t get far enough into their mindsets to lead them out of confusion.
