Electronic Instrumentation

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Electronic Instrumentation

• Project Report Guidelines

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Each project has the following parts

• Introduction
• Background
• Initial Design
• Final Design
• Results and Conclusions
• Extra Credit (optional)
• Personal Responsibilities
• Appendices

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Introduction

• Application Goals
• What is the project about?
• What are you trying to achieve with your final
  design?
• Educational Goals
• What topics have we covered in class that
  influence your understanding of the project?
• You need to name at least two.

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Background

• What is the theory that you must understand in
  order to know what is going on in the project?
• What does the initial design do and how does it
  work?
• Cite references and include in appendix
• web sites (include a link name, not a copy)
• books

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How to Cite References

• In your report, put the number of the reference
  after the information you took from the
  reference. If you take a direct quote, you need
  to put it in quotes
• Inductors are more complex devices than
  capacitors. When you use one in a circuit, you
  not only need to consider the value of the
  inductance, but also the DC resistance of the
  coil, the current-carrying capacity of the coil
  windings, the breakdown voltage between the coil
  and the frame, and the frequency range in which
  the coil is designed to operate. 1
• Do not use too many direct quotes. Try to use
  your own words
• If you try to put more current through an
  inductor than the coil can handle, it gets hot
  and could be unsafe. 1
• In the appendix, include a list of references
• 1. PHYSICS LECTURE NOTES PHYS 395 ELECTRONICS,
  D.M. Gingrich, University of Alberta, Department
  of Physics,1999, http//www.phys.ualberta.ca/Egin
  grich/phys395/notes/phys395.html

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Initial Design

• Building the initial design
• How did you build it?
• What did you learn while building it?
• Calculations/Measurements/Plots/Circuit Diagrams
• Include in appendix
• Tell where these things are located in appendix
• May repeat in report for clarity
• How did it work?
• What results did you get?
• Is there room for improvement? Where?

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Final Design

• Building the final design
• What did you change?
• Why did you make these changes?
• What did you learn while building the final
  design?
• Calculations/Measurements/Plots/Circuit Diagrams
• Include in appendix
• Tell where these things are located in the
  appendix
• May repeat in report for clarity
• How did it work?
• What results did you get?
• Is this an improvement over the initial design?

8
Results and Conclusions

• How good are your results?
• Engineers use quantitative comparisons whenever
  possible. (i.e. percent error, percent
  improvement, graphs, tables, etc.)
• Text should have highlights, trends and general
  conclusions.
• You may only have enough data for a qualitative
  comparison (i.e. better, worse, clearer, etc.)
• Sources of error
• What factors caused your results to be less than
  ideal?
• Formal error analysis not necessary.
• What improvements could you make to get better
  results?
• Basic conclusions and answers to questions
• Answer the questions given to you in the project
  handout.
• The questions should help you to draw some basic
  conclusions about the project.

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Extra Credit

• Discuss anything you did to get extra credit
• What did you do?
• Why did you try this?
• How did it work?
• Why is it extra credit?

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Personal Responsibilities

• Decide on tasks that need to be done
• Assign responsibility for each task to one person
• Describe who did what
• Do not just say We all did everything.
• Either do a final review together, or have one
  person review the final report for clarity and
  consistency.

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Appendices

• Useful data or results from experiments
• Information resources
• From the web
• From the library or other sources
• Only attach useful information
• Useless information will result is a loss of
  points
• Explain the purpose of each piece of info

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Concise vs. Brief

• Concise is the goal
• All relevant information included
• Efficient and specific
• Make it easy to see what you want to communicate
  (graphs, charts, tables, etc.)
• Brief is not the goal
• Short and general
• Not all information included
• Not sufficient for an engineering report

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Grading -- 100 points

• Projects are graded out of 100 points
• Each project also has 20 points for participation
  based on attendance.
• Each project has a grade sheet for the 80 point
  report. It is posted on-line.
• Specific point values assigned to each part for a
  total of 70 points
• 10 points for a general assessment of quality,
  organization and understanding.