ECE110 — Electrical Fundamentals

Course covers basic electromagnetism and circuit analysis. We used the Fundamentals of Physics textbook by Halliday and the Basic Engineering Circuit Analysis textbook by Irwin and Nelms. Followed by ECE212 — Circuit Analysis and ECE221 — Electric and Magnetic Fields.

For circuit analysis, I suggest solving all problems given to you in homework sets by hand. There’s also no need to spend time learning Norton’s theorem — just Thevenin’s theorem will suffice.

I noticed a key problem with this course is that it introduces many circuits and circuit analysis techniques without really explaining why they’re useful. This is rectified a little in ECE212.

Concepts covered

Electromagnetism

• Electric charge
• Coulomb’s law
• Electric field
• Gauss’ law
  • Gaussian surface
• Capacitor
• Current
• Voltage
• Resistor
  • Ohm’s law
• Magnetic force
• Magnetic field
  • Magnetic flux
  • Biot-Savart law
  • Ampere’s law
    • Amperian loop
• Inductor
  • Faraday’s law
  • Lenz’s law

Circuit analysis

• Electrical circuit
• Kirchhoff’s laws
  • Mesh analysis
  • Nodal analysis
• Source transformation
• Linearity
• Superposition
• Thevenin’s theorem and Norton’s theorem
  • Maximum power transfer
• First-order transient circuit
• Complex number
• Sinusoid
• Phasor analysis

Equipment

• Breadboard
• Oscilloscope
• Function generator
• Digital multimeter