# 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 picture

Credit: User:MIckStephenson
The yellow-tipped EIAJ connector is a small (~2 cm) standard DC power supply jack for small appliances, commonly used to adapt transformers converting mains power for laptop computers and peripheral devices.

## 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

A glucose meter is a medical device for determining the approximate concentration of glucose in the blood. It is a key element of home blood glucose monitoring by people with diabetes mellitus or with proneness to hypoglycemia. A small drop of blood obtained by pricking the skin with a lancet is placed on a disposable test strip, which the meter reads and uses to calculate the blood glucose level. The meter then displays the level in mg/dl or mmol/l.

## Selected article

Inductance is a measure of the amount of magnetic flux produced for a given electric current. The term was coined by Oliver Heaviside in February 1886. The SI unit of inductance is the henry (symbol: H), in honour of Joseph Henry. The symbol L is used for inductance, possibly in honour of the physicist Heinrich Lenz.

The inductance has the following relationship:

$L= \frac{\Phi}{i}$

where; L is the inductance in henrys, i is the current in amperes, Φ is the magnetic flux in webers. Strictly speaking, the quantity just defined is called self-inductance, because the magnetic field is created solely by the conductor that carries the current.

When a conductor is coiled upon itself N number of times around the same axis (forming a solenoid), the current required to produce a given amount of flux is reduced by a factor of N compared to a single turn of wire. Thus, the inductance of a coil of wire of N turns is given by:

$L= \frac{\lambda}{i} = N\frac{\Phi}{i}$

where, $\lambda$ is the total 'flux linkage'.

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