# 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,e.g. electron holes) 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

Carl Friedrich Gauss (Gauß) (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. Gauss was a child prodigy, and made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. The cgs unit for magnetic induction was named gauss in his honor.

## Selected picture

Credit: de:Benutzer:Peter nussbaumer
A magnet is suspended over a liquid nitrogen cooled high-temperature superconductor (-200°C).

## News

August 14, 2014

512K Day arrives, surpassing some routers capacity, breaking the internet. More...

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

An electric fence is a barrier that uses painful or even lethal high-voltage electric shocks to deter animals or people from crossing a boundary. The concept of the electric fence was first described in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in 1889, as a defensive weapon. Electric fences were used to control stock in the United States in the early 1930s, and developed further in both the United States and New Zealand. Electric fences have improved significantly since the early days. Improvements include: Polyethylene insulators, improvements in electrical design of the charger, and changes in laws.

## 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:

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

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:

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

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