Sonia Martínez

Benjamin W. Zweifach Endowed Chair
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

MAE 40. Linear Circuits



Announcements

In this website you will find some preliminary information about this course. All the class material will be shared via canvas. Access to the canvas section 59478 here.


Contact Information

Instructor Office Phone Email
Prof. Sonia Martínez FAH 3302 858-822-4243 soniamd at ucsd dot edu
Brooklyn Asai office N/A phone N/A email at basai at ucsd dot edu

Office Hours

Instructor Day Time Location
Sonia Martinez Wed 2:00pm - 3:00pm EBU-I 1603
Brooklyn Asai Fri 1:00pm - 2:00pm EBU-II 105

Schedule of Classes

Lecture Day Time Location
Regular lecture Mon/Wed/Fri 11:00am - 11:50am CENTR 109
Discussion section Wed 4:00pm - 4:50pm CENTR 109
Extra discussion before Midterm 1 TBA TBA TBA
Extra discussion before Midterm 2 TBA TBA TBA
Extra discussion before Final TBA TBA TBA



Course description

This course covers the following contents: steady-state and dynamic behavior of linear, lumped-parameter electrical circuits. Kirchoff’s laws. RLC circuits. Node and mesh analysis. Operational amplifiers. Signal acquisition and conditioning. Electric motors. Design applications in engineering.


Prerequisites

Grade C- or better in MATH 20D, 20F, and Phys 2B.


Syllabus

The course syllabus can be found here


Notes and slides

Quiz on complex numbers pdf

Part I:
  • Introduction (chapters 1 & 2)
  • Equivalent circuits (chapters 2 & 3)
  • Systematic circuit analsysis (chapter 3)
  • Active circuits (chapter 4)

    • Part II:
  • Capacitors, inductors (chapters 9 & 6)
  • Laplace transform (chapters 6 & 10)
  • s-domain circuit analysis and design (chapter 10)
  • Frequency response and filter design (chapters 17 & 14)

    • myDAQ Notes
  • Equivalent circuits
  • Operational amplifiers
  • Audio mixer
  • Low pass filter


    • Assignments

    • We will use Piazza for Q&A related to homework problems All homework submission and grading is electronic Homework exercises, instructions and solutions will be posted on Canvas

    • Midterm exam 1: Oct 23, in class
    • Midterm exam 2: Nov 20, in class
    • Final exam: Dec 10, 2024, Time: 11:30am -- 2:29pm, location TBA

    Grades

    The formula to compute the grade is grade = max{grade1,grade2}, where
      grade1 = 0.20 * homework + 0.25 * midterm1+ 0.25 * midterm2 + 0.30 * final
      grade2 = 0.20 * homework + 0.20 * midterm1+ 0.20 * midterm2 + 0.40 * final
    Even though the homework is only 1/5 of the grade, it is nearly impossible to obtain a good grade without having worked on and spent time with the homework consistently throughout the course. Therefore it is highly recommended that you do it.


    Past years' course websites

    These are the list of websites up to 2018 of previous editions of this course: In these, you should find old midterm, final exams and their solutions, that you can use to practice for our tests!


    Cool linear circuit experiment from MAE171A

    Check out the following linear circuit experiment and its accompanying lecture from MAE171A "Mechanical Engineering Laboratory I" (prepared by Professor Raymond de Callafon)
    You will really need to master all the material from MAE40 to perform this experiment successfully!


    Computer access

    University-licensed software includes Matlab while Python is free. As a UC San Diego student you have access to computer labs and printers throughout campus; see a list here. For more information about academic computing and media services see here


    Collaboration Policy

    You are encouraged to work with other students on your assignments, and to help other students complete their assignments, provided that you comply with the following conditions:
    • Honest representation: The material you turn in for course credit must be a fair representation of your work. You are responsible for understanding and being able to explain and duplicate the work you submit. Group submissions are not allowed in this course, and each student should submit their own individual assignment, written in their own words. The same happens with programming exercises: please do not submit exact copies of programming solutions, the autocorrection tool in Gradescope checks for plagiarism.
    • Active involvement: You must ensure that you are an active participant in all collaborations, and are not merely dividing up the work or following along while another student does the work. For example, copying another student's work without actively being involved in deriving the solution is strictly prohibited. To avoid misunderstandings, please turn in solutions written in your own words, not an exact copy of what someone else submits.
    • Give help appropriately: When helping someone, it is important not to simply give them a solution, because then they may not understand it fully and will not be able to solve a similar problem next time. It's always important to take the time to help someone think through the problem and develop the solution. Often, this can be accomplished by asking them a series of leading questions.
    • If in doubt, ask your instructor: Be sure to ask in advance if you have any doubts about whether a certain type of collaboration is acceptable.


    Note on Academic Dishonesty

    No form of academic dishonesty will be tolerated, this specially refers to homework and plariagism.
    In this course, the use of ChaptGPT or other GenAI tools to solve homework problems is not allowed and constitutes cheating.     To avoid problems, please make sure you report who you work with when doing the homework, and do not turn in exact homework copies. Copying from previous homework solutions is also considered cheating. For the definition of academic dishonesty and its consequences refer to the Student Conduct Code available at the website https://academicintegrity.ucsd.edu



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