The midterm will be a series of short answer questions and it will cover the following topics, all of which we have discussed either on class or your have accessed via the homework assignments. You may use a calculator if you wish. The exam is concept based, not memorization based. You therefore may bring in two pages of notes with you that you can reference in the exam.

• Language, communication and protocols
• Information, encoding, archiving, switching
• Conceptual Timeline of internet development (not exact dates)
• Moore's law and its impact; Maintenance of Moore's law using new technologies
• Bits and Bytes; Binary representation of numbers or characters
• computing storage capacity
• The photoelectric effect; light as a particle
• How your digital camera works.
• Ohms Law; concepts of current, voltage and resistance
• Circuits; resistors in Parallel and resistors in series (practice the circuit tests)
• Basic differences between conductors and insulators and semi-conductors
• Drift velocity
• How doping semiconductors helps
• How a diode functions; how a PN junction functions
• And overall understanding of why it takes so long from discovery of the relevant physics (e.g. photoelectric effect, natural PN junctions, etc) to the fabrication of real devices
• How a transistor works; what's its function is in an Integrated Circuit
• How integrated circuits are fabricated
• Photolithography
• How a basic logic gate works; The difference between AND and OR logic gates. What a truth table is.
• Sources of noise in electronics (e.g. thermal, shot, 1/f)
• How and RC circuit works
• Calculation of the RC time constant
  
  
  
  
  
  Week 5