Welcome to the new EE-61 laboratory. The lab is in the process of change. New lab exercises are being developed and additional test equipment is being pursued. There are 14 lab stations, 8 of these have state-of-the-art Hewlett-Packard digital test equipment, and 6 stations have analog instruments.
It is a general practice in introductory circuits courses to require students to build a simple circuit, make some measurements to verify the theory, and finally to disassemble the circuit. We believe that it would be a much richer learning experience if the circuits built at each lab meeting were sub-circuits of a pertinent, real-world system. Rather than disassembling circuits at the end of each lab meeting, the sub-circuits could be mounted on a circuit board and interconnected as the semester progresses. This is what we are trying to implement in the new EE-61 lab. Eventually, we hope to develop a sequence of exercises leading to a complete wireless control system. In this early developmental stage, our intent is to complete portions of the system and use your results to modify the sub-circuit designs. Hence, it is very important for you to document your results in enough detail such that they can be reproduced. In many ways, this new lab is similar to research. In research, no one knows the answer or even if there is an answer. While the pursuits of this lab are not that nebulous, there does exist an open-endedness similar to what is found in research.