Thinking of formal education, in what subjects do I need prior knowledge to be able understanding this AN?

 

Advanced undergraduate Electronics Engineering.
To understand this app note you should have a good grasp of:

DC electronics
AC electronics including phase shift and complex impedance
Control systems theory as it applies to electronics
Operational Amplifiers: general internal topology and practical application

This is actually harder than it looks...

 

Also, calculus, complex numbers, and Laplace transforms.

 

Gee, I thought it was simple when I wrote it!

 

How depressing is to know how far I will always be of all that!

Gee, I thought it was simple when I wrote it!

Sure it was...for you.

By the way, Ron, while I understand copyright, why if even the trashiest movie shows credits even for the crew involved, application notes of many companies don't mention the author's name? Jealousy, fear for the guy to be known? Or just plain envy?

 

Advanced undergraduate Electronics Engineering.
To understand this app note you should have a good grasp of:

DC electronics
AC electronics including phase shift and complex impedance
Control systems theory as it applies to electronics
Operational Amplifiers: general internal topology and practical application

This is actually harder than it looks...

Really?

Then how is it that an old "Tech Ossifer",(recycled Tech) like myself can get a fair idea of what it's about after a 1 minute appraisal?

Most of the time you can "wing it",taking the stuff you've forgotten how to derive for granted,& just absorb the other info.

 

Really?

Then how is it that an old "Tech Ossifer",(recycled Tech) like myself can get a fair idea of what it's about after a 1 minute appraisal?

Most of the time you can "wing it",taking the stuff you've forgotten how to derive for granted,& just absorb the other info.

Well, I answered his question which was what kind of "formal education" was needed for "understanding" the contents of the app note.

You propose a different question.

I can believe that a person with experience could have a "fair idea" of what is discussed in the app note and apply the concepts more or less successfully.

I do not believe that a person would have a significant understanding of the app note without also understanding the subjects I outlined previously (formal education or not).

 

Well, I answered his question which was what kind of "formal education" was needed for "understanding" the contents of the app note.

You propose a different question.

I can believe that a person with experience could have a "fair idea" of what is discussed in the app note and apply the concepts more or less successfully.

I do not believe that a person would have a significant understanding of the app note without also understanding the subjects I outlined previously (formal education or not).

Well,how condescending of you!

My main point was that "after one minute's appraisal",I could follow the trend of the discussion.
There is really nothing startling in it.

A person with the "formal education" (this always sounds like everybody else dropped out in Primary School),you referred to will probably "breeze through" the AN ,& obtain a deep understanding considerably faster than I would.

However, after spending an (obviously) longer time working through the Maths,I would have obtained the same level of information.

The AN doesn't use a lot of really abstruse Maths,but it's a long time since I had to use them as part of my "bridging training" from Technician to Technical Officer back in the 1980s.

Many EEs seem to think that Techs & Tech Officers obtain their knowledge from a sort of "monkey see,monkey do" process,& are incapable of any deeper intellectual attainments.

 

Company policy dictates whether the write gets credit; and because engineers change companies some companies make a practice of not allowing author names. My name was removed from hundreds of pages because I moved on. I tend to give less attention to papers without authors names because I don't trust them. I always trust papers authored by Jim Williams because he was a perfectionist. I tend to be a generalist interested in theory, so my work was usually not tested to the degree that Jim's was.

 

The referenced Intersil application note was repeated at TI and the information is included in the book "Op Amos for Everyone" which is free on TI's web site. I think the math never goes beyond algebra, and a person with a working knowledge of algebra can use the results immediately. Understanding the the paper does take more education like an understanding of calculus, La Place transforms, complex numbers, graphical techniques, and undergraduate circuit theory.

 

Well,how condescending of you!

My main point was that "after one minute's appraisal",I could follow the trend of the discussion.
There is really nothing startling in it.

A person with the "formal education" (this always sounds like everybody else dropped out in Primary School),you referred to will probably "breeze through" the AN ,& obtain a deep understanding considerably faster than I would.

However, after spending an (obviously) longer time working through the Maths,I would have obtained the same level of information.

The AN doesn't use a lot of really abstruse Maths,but it's a long time since I had to use them as part of my "bridging training" from Technician to Technical Officer back in the 1980s.

Many EEs seem to think that Techs & Tech Officers obtain their knowledge from a sort of "monkey see,monkey do" process,& are incapable of any deeper intellectual attainments.

oh boy, that's a heavy chip you're carrying around, isn't it? I understand your gripe, and I agree with it, but I really don't think the the door was left open for you. I think you were waiting for the open door, it never came, so you kicked it down and threw a bucket of dog **** inside. Clearly the reply was carefully worded so as not to cause offense but you took it anyway.

 

oh boy, that's a heavy chip you're carrying around, isn't it? I understand your gripe, and I agree with it, but I really don't think the the door was left open for you. I think you were waiting for the open door, it never came, so you kicked it down and threw a bucket of dog **** inside. Clearly the reply was carefully worded so as not to cause offense but you took it anyway.

Maybe so!
However,that doesn't affect my initial point that the level of the AN does not reflect the "formal education" suggested as required.
I didn't see any Calculus,& anyway,even if there was,kids do it in High School these days!

 

My name was removed from hundreds of pages because I moved on.

Yes, in my hard print copy of AN 9510 (Intersil) the names in the references are there but in the electronic version currently available they were deleted.

For the record:

AN 9415, Ronald Mancini, 1994.
AN 9420, Ronald Mancini and Jeffrey Lies, 1995.

 

Most modern opamps are already compensated. Then you do not need to know any of "that complex stuff" 99.999% of the time.

You just need to read the spec's on the datasheet and use Ohm's Law to select resistors that set the gain.

 

You need to know enough theory to understand the op amp's specs, and to understand how to apply an op amp. The complex stuff that the Audioguru is so willing to throw out is what fouls up most newbie designs. You must understand enough theory to sort out secondary effects from stray capacitors, falling gain, amplifier phase shift, stray feedback, etc.

 

I threw out my solderless breadboard many years ago (and the stray capacitance, phase shift and stray feedback caused by it) so every opamp circuit I design and build on stripboard works pefectly.

Newbie designs don't work because they build them in a messy tangle of wires on a solderless breadboard.