Basics of Electronics … a “Toybox”

Wooden box with yellow, green, blue, and red duplo blocks.

This toy box of simple tools on basic concepts in Electronics and Electrical Engineering was created by Alan Murray in the School of Engineering. They are not at all exhaustive and are chosen to fit the material taught by Alan in the first-year courses Engineering 1 and Electrical Engineering 1.

Please note – these simulations work on a Windows machine.

All of the tools are modifiable. The spreadsheets are “protected” so that the casual user can only change selected numbers, but you can unprotect your copy and then make your own changes. If you create anything you’re especially proud of (or alternatively find similar useful “toys” elsewhere), please email Alan Murray with your changes, comments, or suggestions for eventual improvement.

Notes: The slider controls etc. can behave in a silly manner if you change resolution without rebooting your machine (e.g. by docking/undocking it or by using a data projector). This is a well-known bug and is cured by rebooting the computer plugged into whatever you do or do not want it plugged into.

Go to the Electronics Toy Box home page

Direct links to toys in the box:

AC and DC coupling

Adding sinusoids together

Charge/Discharge of a Capacitor through a Resistor

Coulomb’s law – 4 charges to move around!

Diodes

Filter example – High-Pass Passive Filter

Fourier Synthesis

Guitar pickup designer

LR circuit, with phasor diagram

Ohm’s law and Peak vs. Root-Mean-Square (RMS) signals