Electronic Instrumentation is fundamental to almost any kind of Experimental Physics. This course provides an introduction to the principles of electronics via the building blocks of modern instrumentation and prepares students to creatively solve control and data acquisition problems in the laboratory. Selecting appropriate transducers and obtaining meaningful results from them is an essential part of a Physicist’s training and this course aims to fill that role.

After a quick introduction to Boolean algebra, solving and minimizing expressions and circuits, the digital part of the course walks the student through gates, counters etc. all the way to A/D and D/A convertors. The analog part of the course similarly spans network theory to transistors all the way to applications of OpAmps. Naturally, the survey keeps the only the essentials required to build basic instrumentation that is often needed in scientific work.

A highlight of the course is the open exhibition of student projects in both the analog and digital domains.