5 Stages of understanding transistors

The transistor will go down as one of the most consequential inventions in history, behind agriculture, paper, and the Super Soaker. But on the list of inventions that have completely transformed the very fabric of the human condition, it showed up pretty late in the game, and that's because it's a fairly complex thing. Conceptually … Continue reading 5 Stages of understanding transistors →

Find Your Niche

Because I spend all day at work browsing DigiKey and reading articles about electronics, I get served up ads for textbooks, causing me to rapidly and aggressively re-evaluate my life. One of the books it advertised was titled "Wandering Spurs in MASH-Based Fractional-N Frequency Synthesizers" by Dawei Mai & Michael Peter Kennedy. This is the … Continue reading Find Your Niche →

Transimpedance Bandwidth

Transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) find wide use in electronics and systems, from things like optical communication transceivers in WiFi routers, to electron multipliers in mass spectrometers. They're one of my favorite basic subcircuits to design. They're often used in situations where you're trying to squeeze water out of a rock (our TIA at Bruker for mass … Continue reading Transimpedance Bandwidth →

The Basis of Linear Algebra: Purposely Confusing Undergrads

This post is for anyone taking linear algebra or wants to understand why they hated taking it. I'm taking a graduate level linear systems analysis course that's meant to serve as a primer to things like non-linear systems and advanced control theory, and I've been having flashbacks to what I think is one of the … Continue reading The Basis of Linear Algebra: Purposely Confusing Undergrads →