Introduction to Electronics

Electronics seems to be difficult to understand. Upon summarizing the whole history of electronics, here is how it looks: 

The word “Electronics” stands for “Electro-mechanics”. In simple words, the study of the motion of electrons under the influence of electric/magnetic field is what electronics is all about.

Electronics has come into the picture from 1897 where vacuum tubes were used for electron movement and functioning by J.A. Fleming. Later on, Vacuum diodes, triodes came into the picture. The major breakthrough though occurred in Bell laboratory in the year 1948 with the invention of Transistor by combined work of John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley.

Further, the evolution of modern electronic technology has been based on the process of micro-miniaturization which in-turn means the reduction in the size of components which led to the advancement of new Integrated circuit technology. This gave birth to SSI, MSI, LSI, and VLSI and still the process is going on with the advent of Nanoelectronic materials and it is currently under R&D. The future is in safe hands as the technology is changing at a great pace.

Electronic components:

Electronic circuits contain various components. But in general, it can be categorized into 5 basic components. (3 passive and 2 active)

As we can see, the above classification briefly provides the information regarding the basic electronic components which is part of any electronic equipment.

Let’s summarize the classification:

1. Electronic components are classified into Active and Passive components.
2. An active component consumes/dissipates energy based on the application that we use.
3. Passive components can be further classified into
•  Components that store energy
• A Capacitor that stores charge.
• An Inductor that store energy in terms of flux.
• Components that dissipate energy
•  Resistors that dissipate electrical power.
4. Active components are subclassified into two types.
• Tube types (Triode, Pentode, and Thyratron etc. Basically used in microwave communication like satellite communication systems)
• Semiconductor type (Diode, Transistor, FET, MOSFET, SCR etc that are used in various electronic equipment).