# Portal:Electronics

## The Electronics Portal

The field of electronics comprises the study and use of systems that operate by controlling the flow of electrons (or other charge carriers) in devices such as thermionic valves and semiconductors. The design and construction of electronic circuits to solve practical problems is an integral technique in the field of electronics engineering and is equally important in hardware design for computer engineering. All applications of electronics involve the transmission of either information or power.

Consumer electronics are electronic devices intended for consumer use. Consumer electronics usually find applications in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Consumer electronics are manufactured throughout the world, although there is a particularly high concentration of manufacturing activity in the Far East. One overriding characteristic of all consumer electronic products is the trend of ever-falling prices. This is driven by gains in manufacturing efficiency and automation, coupled with improvements in semiconductor design.

## Selected biography

Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (February 18, 1745 - March 5, 1827) was an Italian physicist known especially for the development of the electric battery in 1800. In 1775 he devised the electrophorus, a device that produced a static electric charge. In 1776-77 he studied the chemistry of gases, discovered methane, and devised experiments such as the ignition of gases by an electric spark in a closed vessel. In 1881 an important electrical unit, the volt, was named in his honor. The Toyota Alessandro Volta is named after Volta. Volta Crater on the Moon is also named after him.

## Selected design

Credit: commons:User:Jjbeard
Circuit diagram of a simple Crowbar circuit, with an 8V nominal output (7.6V with SD1).

## News

November 19, 2008 The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said that repairing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will cost up to 16.6 million or US\$21 million. More...

April 30, 2008

HP Labs announces the creation of a Memristor, the fourth basic element of electronic circuits with the Resistor, Capacitor, and Inductor.

December 4, 2007

On the third day of the 2007 Taipei IT Month in Taiwan yesterday, notebook computers and desktop computers built with AMD's Phenom processor and Intel Penryn processor openly battled for the consumer-market after each company launched their quad core processors. More...

February 27, 2007

The new South Pole Telescope has recently collected its first light in a long-term project to learn about the nature of dark energy. More...

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## Consumer showcase

The Tungsten series was Palm, Inc.'s line of business-class Palm OS-based PDAs. With the purchase of the Palm name from PalmSource, Palm has dropped the Tungsten name from newer offerings. As of 2006, only the Tungsten E2 continues to use the Tungsten name. Palm's other business-class model continuing the Tungsten line is the TX.

## Selected article

In physics, Coulomb's law is an inverse-square law indicating the magnitude and direction of electrostatic force that one stationary, electrically charged object of small dimensions exerts on another. It is named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb who used a torsion balance to establish it.

The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two point charges is directly proportional to the magnitudes of each charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.

For calculating the direction and magnitude of the force simultaneously, one will wish to consult the full vector version of the Law

$\vec{F} = \frac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_0} \frac{q_1 q_2 }{|\vec{r}|^3} \vec{r} = \frac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_0 } \frac{q_1 q_2}{|\vec{r}|^2} \hat{r}$
where $\vec{F}$ is the electrostatic force vector, $q_1$ is the charge on which the force acts, $q_2$ is the acting charge, $\vec{r}=\vec{r_1}-\vec{r_2}$ is the distance vector between the two charges, $\vec{r_1} \$ is position vector of $q_1$, $\vec{r_2} \$ is position vector of $q_2$, $\hat{r}$ is a unit vector pointing in the direction of $\vec{r}$, and $\epsilon_0$ is a constant called the permittivity of free space.

This vector equation indicates that opposite charges attract, and like charges repel. When $q_1 q_2 \$ is negative, the force is attractive. When positive, the force is repulsive.

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