Recent content by pvshackguy

Ah well, we're talking about trade apprentices here, quite a different set of priorities. Forty years ago I became an electronics technologist. Then, after a lifetime of adventures that wound up involving too much time sitting at a computer, I decided to move to a rural setting and become an...

Hopefully my response to anorlunda will shed a little light. I am trying to build an instructional bridge between complex math and the triangles that electrician apprentices learn to use for AC circuit analysis. You've not seen triangles derived from vector diagrams, e.g. for current with sides...

Thanks for the post. I assume you meant that an inductive reactance is considered to consume reactive power, therefore a capacitor must generate it. Considering that they are both energy storage devices that, in the ideal, store and return all of their energy to the circuit, I still can't think...

(An even longer-winded version was written and deleted out of mercy.) Assume an AC voltage at zero degrees applied to an ideal parallel RLC circuit. For a predominantly inductive circuit, the vector diagram for current should show the supply current in the fourth quadrant (i.e. with lagging...

You anticipated my follow-up too. Thanks.

This isn't a homework question because nobody assigned it to me. It is a theoretical question however. I understand that in a balanced 3-phase system with a constant load, instantaneous power is constant. Not "pretty constant" but a flat line. This suggests to me (warning: amateur) that...

Ahhhh... This is the missing factor I was looking for. I'm very grateful. BTW in our course "effective" is equated with rms. Sorry to have accepted this definition at face value. :-) It's hard to tell what to trust when the principle text contains statements like "The joule is the SI...

Homework Statement Simple question: is the effective voltage of an idealised full-wave rectification not simply the rms voltage, as it is with the original AC waveform? Backgound... In an electrical apprentice program I am being instructed to use average DC voltage to calculate power in a...

This is very helpful, thanks. Although my mind is not completely at rest, that is likely too much to hope for at my level. :-)

Most explanations of doping, coupled with the simple definition of hole as positive charge carrier, and reinforced by classic graphic illustrations of P- and N-doped regions full of little plus and minus signs respectively, makes for a common point of confusion when learning basic semiconductor...