If you have no formal qualifications in electronics, but you think that you have acquired a good knowledge of the theory, you can participate in the free "Circuits and Electronics" online course from MIT and get a certificate:

https://www.edx.org/courses/MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall/about

(don't miss the FAQs at the bottom of the page, just scroll down past the mugshots of the course staff)

Please note that you can't register right now, the next course will start in spring. However, if you are interested in the course, you might use the time to prepare yourself for it, that's why I posted it now. There are no formal prerequisites to register, but some prior knowledge is assumed - I guess differential equations are the most frightening of it.

To get an idea what the course is about, you can take a look at these (older) notes:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electric...ts-and-electronics-spring-2007/lecture-notes/

or videos:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electric...s-and-electronics-spring-2007/video-lectures/

 

This a a wonderful offer. Thanks for posting. Unfortunately my math skills are very lacking. I am not sure I remember what a differential equation is.

 

This a a wonderful offer. Thanks for posting. Unfortunately my math skills are very lacking. I am not sure I remember what a differential equation is.

Differential equations, also known as derivatives, come from Calculus. They're used to determine the rate of change of a function. For example, you can find the velocity of an object by taking the first derivative its position function, and you can find acceleration by taking the derivative of the velocity function. They're actually fairly simple, provided you understand how and why they work.

Thanks for posting Blofeld. I'm lucky enough to be able to sit in on the lab lectures at the university where I work, so I've been able to refresh my memory on several aspects of electronics. I'm sure that link will help a lot of people out, too.

Matt

 

We've just done second order differential equations in further maths.

I can't imagine the pain of higher orders!

Looks awesome though!

Would someone from outside the states be able to do it?

 

We've just done second order differential equations in further maths.

I can't imagine the pain of higher orders!

Looks awesome though!

Would someone from outside the states be able to do it?

Not quite sure, but I think second order is as high as it gets - hard enough ! You certainly don't need to be able to solve every differential equation in the world (I think there is a book by Kamke for this, definitely overkill), just a very tiny subset of them.

And sure, it's open for everbody, they even have a story about a Mongolian teacher who used it:

"In another instance, a Mongolian teacher named Tony Kim '09, MEng '11 used 6.002x as the basis for a high school course he taught. Students were able to use the online textbook for 6.002x, watch the recorded lectures and conduct experiments on the circuit-board simulator, but they also worked with real physical circuit components under Kim’s direction and tackled problems of his devising. One of Kim’s 15-year-old students got a perfect score on the final exam — an achievement that should not be diminished, Agarwal says, by the fact that the Mongolian teen shared that distinction with 340 other 6.002x students. “It’s a very hard exam,” Agarwal says."

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mitx-edx-first-course-recap-0716.html