Transistors

[Murphyv310]

My own feeling is and I'll stick with is NWM confuses many threads. This is a vintage forum and although terminology has changed and rightly so it is confusing to novices all the changes. Why confuse the issues even more by referring to old American books that in instances cited on this forum of their inaccuracies and lack of decent explanations.

[pwdrive]

I've owned ARRL books and RSGB books, ARRL is the winner for sure.

Check out the old time American training films on electronics etc on Utube then check out the British equivalent.......

Check out what could be argued as the radio bible.....RDH4.....Chapter 2, Valve Characteristics by Fritz Langford Smith, called a valve but wot primarily attracts the electrons is called the plate....

Lawrence.

[Murphyv310]

It's not just myself Lawrence that is not in agreement with constant reference to US books, Post 146 by Terry is in the same vein.
I'm not saying that it is wrong but we are in the UK, and hopefully some will be drawn to the hobby and hopefully will gain some knowledge.
When I did my City and Guilds the lecturer would often be be side tracked by a smart **** in the class who knew it all having read so many US publications. The class was often disrupted and eventually he got put out as we all were loosing ground with this lad.
Teaching is hard enough without different opinions or ways of explaining things. My daughter is a high school teacher and occasionally there will be a pupil that says he or she has read this on the internet and its the right way to do things etc etc and then learning the way it's done here goes out the window.

So although this forum can be read worldwide how do we approach the way we help someone? Stick to UK and possibly European terminology or go world wide and confuse the novices and some of the old hands too?
I'd be interested in what you think.

[Terry]

European terminology, Trevor? Be careful what you wish for!

We've already been discussing the confusion between B and HT. Now if you are not careful we will be throwing the European U into the mix!

I remember the first English editions of Elektor magazine back in the 1970s where they outlined the conventions that they used - anyone remember TUP & TUN?  (Transistor, universal: PNP and Transistor, universal: NPN) - and the use of U for voltages (but measured, of course, in V)

It did my head in then and still does today, although I don't recall seeing it in more recent copies of Elektor.

It obviously confuses lots of people: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/arch...38522.html

There is one exception that I would make and, like you, I'd like to see what others think.

I was brought up on US symbols for integrated circuits - courtesy mainly, I think, of Texas Instruments - and find the low level symbols clear and unambiguous whereas the European passion for squares for all these functions leaves me cold.

Not something, of course, that we see much of on this forum, for obvious reasons, and complex ICs, when they do appear, are more likely to contain analogue, rather than digital, circuitry.

[Murphyv310]

Yep you're right Terry about some of the EU terminology. My mind had eradicated them.

[Nowhere-Man]

These days it's so much easier to very quickly reference and eliminate a source of confusion. The use of C + - by a grid had me foxed. I typed in something like "Ham circuit abreviations" into Google and then I was the wiser. In fact I was pretty pleased and passed on the info. Language learning now goes way beyond what we had in the 1990's. Rather than search volume dictionaries and grammar tables, Wikipedia will simply give you a breakdown. Is there an excuse not to use this device? I had to gradually seek many of these Russian terms like "B" meaning volts (because B=V in cyrillic). Let's not even go into capacitor ratings where I preferred the old 0.1 microfarad system. When in doubt, Google's about.

[pwdrive]

RDH4 uses E for voltage when explaining valve characteristics (Chapter 2) not only that, Ec for the grid voltage and Eb for the plate voltage.

Lawrence.

[radioman]

Well, to me a 'Plate' is something you eat your dinner off... whereas an 'Anode' is something that attracts electrons - simple !
I think we should use terms that are the easiest to understand for most folk reading it.
So for circuit descriptions that means using British terms because this is a British based forum - however, with regard to logic symbols I do prefer the American types as that's what were used in the majority of books and magazines when I was learning about logic and the British Standard ones are hard to decipher IMHO.


Andy

[Nowhere-Man]

" My daughter is a high school teacher and occasionally there will be a pupil that says he or she has read this on the internet and its the right way to do things etc etc and then learning the way it's done here goes out the window."
What about Bill Gates? A uni drop out who did his own thing and came up with Microsoft. Scores of non academics contributed to technology. From late 80's to early 90's I was in the uni system but now feel I learn more just developing my interest and not getting bogged down with routines. If something gets boring I drop it for a time and change course. Threads like this are free terrain so again in case of being bored, anyone can take a thread in a new direction. I'm hardly going to make a post to highlight what I like or dislike, although some sites have a "like" or dislike icon.
I would never myself object to a post but jusy skip by it if it wasn't useful. I suspect Lawrence shares this amateur radio angle so not a total washout to digress - as long as it's shop talk.

[ppppenguin]

What about Bill Gates? A uni drop out who did his own thing and came up with Microsoft.

There are many people with cherished theories and ideas. Very very few are the next Bill Gates or Albert Einstein. Yes, he was a bit of laggard at school too. I know a guy, a respected medical research scientist, who happens to have ideas that have been dismissed by the establishment. I really don't know if he's on to something important or whether it's just another crackpot theory. Maybe years after his death somebody will see his papers and make a breakthrough based on his theories. More likely they will be forgotten.

Some ideas survive and grow. Such as tectonic plate theory which went from crackpot to orthodoxy over a few decades. Some are hardy survivors, such as Lamarck's work on evolution. Although most think it wrong and it's done serious damage (read about Lysenko in the USSR) there's a bit of it that just won't go away. One word: epigenetics.

There are many dropouts from the system. Most of them are just that and no more.

There's a good piece of fiction writing about a scientist with a crackpot idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway
In the novel he was proven correct. In real life he was very nearly right too, albeit for the wrong reasons. Recommended reading.