Electronics in everyday use

TECHNOLOGY

GOOD day one all and welcome to this lecture on Electronics.
You can say it is solid-state physics as well as integrated circuits in the engineering component.
When you see the term technology it quickly reminds you of the mobile phones with the apps (applications), pictures, you-tubes, computers, remote control of microwave-ovens and the drones and so on. This is all true in every sense of the word.
Now, all these areas fall into a very special building block and this is electronics. Some may refer to mechanical moving parts of modern metallic or alloy structures working to do productive work as technology as well. If it is modern, then it has to comply with an accuracy standard that is calculated and has to be ascertained for efficiency at least through a computing process such as Cam (Computer aided manufacturing).
Speaking on the solid-state electronics, it is a noble achievement in the field of science and mathematics. The pen to paper information recorded in time immemorial with the paper to magnetic and optical recording on a medium such as a magnetic disk or an optical disk and a magnetic tape and its manipulation to produce all sorts of information needed by the user is the most revolutionising accomplishment in human history all done through electronics.
Also, most importantly, distant radio transmissions and receptions in far places are mind boggling as well. An invention in the triode of a vacuum tube and thermo-ionic valves enabled for communication in distant places taking place in the past. The modern-day term is a transistor that processes signals as messages relayed from a sender to the receivers. The telecommunication linkage for communication in a country like PNG and between countries like PNG and Australia or Japan, England and China is made possible through electronics.
The triode of in a transistor with one arm taking up the base current, and the other two arms for a collector current and an emitter current. It basically achieves two principle outcomes, and these are amplifications and switching. These are the inherent qualities that all microprocessor and microcontrollers with memory chips as sophisticated components are seen to operate in an electronic system.
The components that produce the electronics systems are adders, registers, flipflops, counters, Mosfets(Metal oxide semiconductor Field Effect Transistors), logic gates and multiplexers. They give effect to engineered systems as ASIC (application specific integrated circuits), DSP (Digital Signal Processors) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays).

Progress with electronics
There are bases to enable you to have a standalone or a connected whole as a component of an engineered system to fulfil a role as an oscillator, an amplifier or a transmitter or receiver of a radio signal. They can be digital or the principle analogue signal and of course can operate as a mixture of the two forms of the signals. Any signal in a current and a voltage can be constrained to a rise and a fall levels to convert to a digital signal. In this mode, the rate of transmission considering very minimal presence of errors and very high precision of data is achieved. When data is relayed to far distances from microwave repeaters for signal amplification and retransmission is a highly sought and desired methodology for its use.
There are so many advances made from its vacuum tube incubation to the bipolar transistor invented from Bell laboratories in the USA. The basic setback was the inability of the transistor to be miniaturised.
Then came the rescue package. It was essentially from the same laboratory (Bells) that was seen through Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng’s work in 1959 who invented something that revolutionised the electronics industry and the technology as it is known today. They have invented the MOSFET that is scalable and is the basic constituent of all electronic devices both passive and active like inductors, capacitors, resistors, diodes and thyristors and transistors respectively.
The germanium-based and miniaturised transistor was able to come in many thousands and millions to date in all electronic devices and electronic engineering systems in use today such as the microprocessor systems as mentioned previously.
A signal is received through the base arm of the transistor which is of a different polarity like a positive terminal known as a P type material. The base arm is sandwiched between two like terminals and these are for the other opposing polarity known as the negative or N type material.
These form the collector and the emitter arms of the transistor. Now the transistor is connected in a circuit, connecting the collector to the positive terminal and emitter to the negative terminal. The base current is like a switch and if say a 0.6amps is applied to it, it will cause a huge conventional current to flow from the collector to the emitter end to drive huge loads that can measure hundredfold magnitude like 60amps from the 0.6amps of the base current. Such devices will include amplifiers such as loud-speakers or amplification of stored images such as the moving pictures on a VDU (visual display unit) like the flat panel screen of an LCD (liquid crystal display) and also other LEDs (light emitting diodes) include organic lights.
The base current switches on the huge current flow from collector to the emitter which is in a forward biased state. In certain circumstances when the base current is increased above a threshold value (i.e, above 0.6amps), it will then drive the collector current to saturation also known as bottoming. That is, the base/emitter voltage is greater that the base/collector voltage. This will cause the base current to be reverse biased resulting in the saturation which actually acts as a switch to stop any further flow of current across.

Electronic applications
The basic works of the electromagnetic effect in the nodes and exchange stations or highways of electronic systems results in the working of the technology as we know in electronics.
Further to this we have to have a critical mathematical knowledge of the magnitude at the networks in which certain currents and voltages are supposed to be for the correct relay of the transmission of messages.
You have a well formulated law called the ohms laws and Kirchhoff’s laws which have to be comprehended and applied to solve the allowable quantities of currents and voltages at each nodes and branches. Further to this, we have the circuits that are to be appreciated and purposely built to do with a correct unit of an electronic system.
It may be an end point wiring as well as in the classical system. The trend in the modern electronics industry is towards a printed circuit. The aids used for the component structure can be an electronics laboratory simulation software to fulfil a certain electronic function in the electronic engineered system.

Arriving technology in electronics
As we have alluded to in the beginning of this lecture, technology is all based on electronics and its applications. It is the current idea of the logics and digital technology revolution.
Hence, the arriving technologies come from all areas of human-inhabited space.
According to Wikipedia, electronics is use in IT and communications, agriculture, aerospace, construction, architecture, materials and textile science, optoelectronics, energy, entertainment, medicine, neuroscience, military, space, robotics and transport
To mention every emerging technology under these headings in this lecture is not possible given the limited space we are allowed to discuss in this and other lectures we have learnt thus far.
My prayer for PNG today is: Wait on the Lord to give you the strength to endure. People can let you down, but Jesus never fails anyone. Because He sustains you, you are His own. For without Him you can do nothing.
Next week: Computer engineering in technology

• Michael John Uglo is the author of the science textbook ‘Science in PNG, Pacific, Asia & Caribbean’ and a lecturer in Avionics, Auto- Piloting & Aircraft Engineering. Please send comments to: [email protected]