Talk:Circuit Idea/How to Make Perfect Components

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Here is the building "scenario" that my students from group 68b and I were using during laboratory excercise about the op-amp circuits with parallel negative feedback (op-amp inverting circuits). Circuit-fantasist (talk) 18:03, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Lab 4: How to make perfect components by parallel NFB

Thursday, April 24, 2008, 16.45 h

[edit] Is the real diode a perfect component?

A "harmful" voltage VF across a diode.

A forward voltage drop VF appears across a real diode when a current flows through it... What is this voltage drop - useful or harmful? Sometimes it is useful; other times it is harmful...

"Useful" examples. When we make voltage stabilizers, we need this voltage drop. In these cases we do all that is possible to create and increase this useful voltage drop appearing across various diode component: diodes, LEDs, zeners, multiple diodes connected in series...

"Harmful" examples. In other cases, when we use a diode as a switching element, we do all that is possible to remove and to remove this harmful voltage drop... Then we need an ideal diode without forvard voltage drop VF...


[edit] Making the simplest parallel diode limiter

The forward voltage drop VF across a real diode disturbs the input source.

Why do we connect a reasistor R between the input voltage source and the diode (load)?

What does the combination (VIN + R) represent? What is it?


[edit] Making an "ideal" diode without VF

[edit] Deriving the basic idea from our human routine

(write here all the situations in your daily routine where you have remove all the obstacles standing in your way:) Circuit-fantasist 06:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Implementing the powerful idea into an electrical circuit

A wonder: VF has dissappeared!
Removing the harmful forward voltage drop VF across a real diode by "antivoltage".


The imperfect real diode has become an almost ideal one.

What have we actually done here? How does it operate? What is the final result?

The answer is amazing: we have made just... a piece of wire...?!? What do you think about this speculation? Is it always right? Circuit-fantasist (talk) 06:59, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Making an almost ideal "op-amp" diode

[edit] An op-amp acting as a varying voltage source

What can act as a varying voltage source in our electronic circuit? What can "help" the imperfect diode by adding so much voltage as it loses across the diode? At last Lab 3 we were using transistors for such a purpose; let's now, for the sake of change, use an op-amp...

An op-amp can "help" the imperfect diode by adding a voltage VF in series with the input voltage source.

Now the op-amp has to "insert" the "helping" voltage VF into the circuit; so, how to connect it?

[edit] Finishing the op-amp circuit

Eureka! We have invented an (almost) ideal diode without (any) forvard voltage VF!

Now the op-amp does this boring "donkey" work; we might relax... (by Lora Kirilova).


Students (Lora, Tanya, Jordan...) investigate a diode connected in the feedback loop.
Students (write your name here...) investigate the same phenomenon.


Investigating a diode connected in the feedback loop (by Lora Kirilova).
How the op-amp compensates the harmful forward voltage drop VF across a real diode (waveforms).


[edit] Enlarging the powerful "helping" idea by destroying...

[edit] ...multiple diode voltage drops...

Investigating two diodes connected in the feedback loop.
Now the op-amp compensates doubled voltage drop VF (waveforms).


[edit] ...zener diode voltage drop...

Investigating a zener diode connected in the feedback loop (by Lora Kirilova).
The op-amp can compensate even the voltage drop across a zener diode.


[edit] ...resistor voltage drop

With the same success we can destroy the "harmful" voltage drop across a resistor. What a circuit can we "invent" in this way? Write its name here....

[edit] Making the harmful voltage drop act as an input

Investigating a photoresistor connected in the feedback loop (by Lora Kirilova).


[edit] Generalizing the powerful "helping" idea

A recipe: imperfect component + varying battery = perfect element.

We are already true magicians as we can transform any imperfect component into an almost ideal one! In this lab, we have transmuted a real diode (ordinary, LED, zener, any combinations of them, etc.), a resistor and a photoresistor into... a piece of wire:) having no any voltage drop across it! But with the same success we can make a "botomless" capacitor (an op-amp inverting integrator)... For this purpose, we just incorporate a varying battery to the imperfect component that compensated the losses inside the component. All the op-amp inverting circuits exploit this clever trick.


[edit] Resources

How do we create a virtual ground? is a circuit story about the great phenomenon.
Op-amp inverting current-to-voltage converter reveals the basic idea behind the famous circuit.
How do we build an op-amp ammeter? is a similar story about the active ammeter.