Monday 20 November 2017

What is anAntenna


An Antenna is a transducer, which converts electrical power into electromagnetic waves
and vice versa.
An Antenna can be used either as a transmitting antenna or a receiving antenna.
 A transmitting antenna is one, which converts electrical signals into
electromagnetic waves and radiates them.
 A receiving antenna is one, which converts electromagnetic waves from the
received beam into electrical signals.
 In two-way communication, the same antenna can be used for both transmission
and reception.
Antenna can also be termed as an Aerial. Plural of it is, antennae or antennas. Now-a-
days, antennas have undergone many changes, in accordance with their size and shape.
There are many types of antennas depending upon their wide variety of applications.

Saturday 28 January 2017

Transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical power. It is composed of semiconductor material usually with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor’s terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal.

How it works

A transistor is really simple and really complex. Let’s start with the simple part. A transistor is a miniature electronic component that can do two different jobs. It can work either as an amplifier or a switch:


  • When it works as an amplifier, it takes in a tiny electric current at one end (an input current) and produces a much bigger electric current (an output current) at the other. In other words, it's a kind of current booster. That comes in really useful in things like hearing aids, one of the first things people used transistors for. A hearing aid has a tiny microphone in it that picks up sounds from the world around you and turns them into fluctuating electric currents. These are fed into a transistor that boosts them and powers a tiny loudspeaker, so you hear a much louder version of the sounds around you. William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor, once explained transistor-amplifiers to a student in a more humorous way: "If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification."
  • Transistors can also work as switches. A tiny electric current flowing through one part of a transistor can make a much bigger current flow through another part of it. In other words, the small current switches on the larger one. This is essentially how all computer chips work. For example, a memory chip contains hundreds of millions or even billions of transistors, each of which can be switched on or off individually. Since each transistor can be in two distinct states, it can store two different numbers, zero and one. With billions of transistors, a chip can store billions of zeros and ones, and almost as many ordinary numbers and letters (or characters, as we call them). More about this in a moment.