I am writing a math tutorial to use for tube electronics

I have been learning stuff as I go along trying to learn how to understand or even design circuits myself and I have been writing things down so I won't forget them and so have something to look at later. At first I was going to make a kind of "math cheat sheet"... all the symbols and formulas I don't ever remember without combing through books for the umpteenth time trying to remember where I saw something that I used to figure out something once upon a time before. I am still doing that but it will be part of a basic tutorial which explains what the math means and how to do it in real friendly warm fuzzy ways which won't frighten anybody. Like ME for instance! lol.

I started with Ohm's Law (of course) and it would be cool if anyone would like to critique what I've written so far. I'm sure I made mistakes. I plan on expanding from Ohm's Law to more complex stuff like designing a grounded cathode stage at least and the math and methods to do that. It is at

http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/DIY-mathtutorial

All sugggstions/corrections welcome! Or alternatively feel free to suggest some alternative activities, pottery, Indian cooking, whatever. :razz:

Kiira

I find this quite handy: And easier than Mango Chutney (Isn't she on Fox and Friends in the AM?)

And heres how to figgure components in series and parallel. KVL/KCL
Real Player required

Kiira: Very good stuff! When the whole piece is complete, I suggest you submit it to audioXpress. They have never published an article about this, and I think it would be useful.

A couple of bits to add: You mentioned the equation for power as:

P = E^2 / R

Two other useful equations for power:

P = I^2 * R

P = E * I

They're all restatements of the same basic equation, but -- like the different ways of expressing Ohm's Law -- each is useful in its own context.

Peace,
Paul

When I went to college, I learned about BEC VopInI, an acronym for a transistor cheat chart. When I was learning it would have been the time to document all that knowledge, now it's lost in my brain.

DC and ohms law is so very important as you said
but
AC
thinking in terms of Frequency Dependant Ohms Law ... :shock: I just made that term up ... (silly me)

as Wayne suggests Ls and Cs
perhaps a simple impedance plot of the three basic passive components to illustrate the point.

The AC world can get strange, we people often like to think in a stationary, singular mode. Coming to grips with AC can make audio seem clearer.

to us in DC or Audio mode an antenna is just a short circuit but when in RF mode it becomes the RF version of a speaker ... so to speak ... :? I'll stop speaking now.

Wow thanks to everyone for all help and feedback! Iguess I will keep working on this. I formatted into a web page but I haven't finished that yet.

[quote author="pstamler"]Kiira: Very good stuff! When the whole piece is complete, I suggest you submit it to audioXpress. They have never published an article about this, and I think it would be useful.
[/quote]

Do you think it is kind of basic though? I wouldn't think that a magazine like audioXpress would be interested in something just for beginners like that. But I could make it a bit more proffessioanl and give it a try.

A couple of bits to add: You mentioned the equation for power as:

P = E^2 / R

Two other useful equations for power:

P = I^2 * R

P = E * I

They're all restatements of the same basic equation, but -- like the different ways of expressing Ohm's Law -- each is useful in its own context.

Click to expand...

Rawk. That is what Larry's chart is about too. I will add that for sure.

As I go along I am adding the variable names and the associated formulas into the appendix, which was my original cheat sheet idea.

Wayne and Kev: huh? :razz:

LOL, I just mean I haven't goten to CRC filters and all but I think I will when I write the part about figuring out how power supplies should be designed... the basics of course.

thanks again!

Kiira

[quote author="kiira"]http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/DIY-mathtutorial

All sugggstions/corrections welcome! Or alternatively feel free to suggest some alternative activities, pottery, Indian cooking, whatever. :razz:

Kiira[/quote]
Congrats! :thumb:
good reading - waiting for your expansions.
You have the ability to explain dry stuff in a way makin me want more and for shure will help a noob like me.

A minor correction on
[quote author="kiira"]OHM's LAW uses:

I = current in amps
E or V = volts
R = resistance in ohms

The basic Ohm's law formulas are the building blocks of much
electronics problem solving, design and theory. They are:

voltage: E = IR or E (volts) = I (current) * R (resistance)
(sometimes voltage is called "V" in the equation too, go figure)[/quote]
E or U = volts in V

You may add, that in Europe value of resistors like 6800 ohms or 6.8 k is often expressed as 6k8 (often helps to catch the correct value of lousy copys)

all the best

just read your tutorial- great stuff! im sure it will be very usefull to people.
i wish it were there some time ago (short) when i learned it..... :thumb:

RE: The pie chart, Kiira, tape that to the back of your voltmeter and you will go into battle like a steely-eyed EE.

It demonstrates the beautiful reciprocity of all this and how knowing 2 things always gets you the 3rd.=)

[quote author="kiira"][quote author="pstamler"]Kiira: Very good stuff! When the whole piece is complete, I suggest you submit it to audioXpress. They have never published an article about this, and I think it would be useful.
[/quote]

Do you think it is kind of basic though? I wouldn't think that a magazine like audioXpress would be interested in something just for beginners like that. But I could make it a bit more proffessioanl and give it a try. [/quote]

Yes, it's basic, but they aim to provide material for people at various levels of the DIY fancy. So they might pick up on something that's a clear and well-organized introduction. Especially since the next several paragraphs will wind up being not so basic at all. I assume you'll be doing the equations for cutoff frequencies in RC, RL and LC circuits, gain equations for tubes in various circuits, etc., building on what you already have.

Peace,
Paul

[quote author="pstamler"]Yes, it's basic, but they aim to provide material for people at various levels of the DIY fancy. So they might pick up on something that's a clear and well-organized introduction. Especially since the next several paragraphs will wind up being not so basic at all. I assume you'll be doing the equations for cutoff frequencies in RC, RL and LC circuits, gain equations for tubes in various circuits, etc., building on what you already have.

Peace,
Paul[/quote]

I see. I will give it a try after it is done, maybe rewrite it some to make it fit in better, optimum length etc.

Yes I will probably go on to basics in power supplies or else the basic maths for a single triode grounded cathode stage. I actually need to learn the way to do RC and LC maths for power supplies myself. I will be looking in RH3 and RH4 this weekend.

thanks everyone again this is great I am really happy that it was easy to read especially. I think that the best approach is just really practical... How do I do X,Y,Z?

Kiira

do you have a program you're using that will allow you to graphically cut/paste/draw/arrange some of these equations?? I wanted to do this for a while but that was my hang up... I guess i didn't want to do it that bad.

I was going to make one and laminate it so i wouldn't lose it. My girlfriend has photoshop which would sort of work, i guess. But I don't live w/her anymore...

I asked somebody in the math dept at school and they didn't have anygood answers either... or maybe they did but it was for something expensive.


anybody know of free/shareware that would let you do this??

thanks.
joe

Hi,
Any good word processing program should allow you to size & place graphics files with text. For editing the individual graphics there's a very capable freeware program out there called Photofiltre. http://www.photofiltre.com. You can do all of the things in it that you would need to do with your graphics files. It's not as complete as newer versions of Photoshop but has a lot of power & capabilities for a free program.

Then, there are several free programs out there that act like a printer driver that will let you publish .pdf files for distribution of the final guide ... words & pictures. Search at http://win.softpedia.com/index1.free.shtml

Good luck & keep going Kiira, it's a very cool project!

Skip Beach

Hi hi,

Microsoft Word has something called an equation editor. Mastering that would allow you to print out good looking documents with math in them.

There are also conversion programs to convert documents from word to html but I don't know what they do with the equations, I don't use microsoft things very much. I am making my tube math tutorial into a formatted web pag as I go along.

I have used the markup language typesetter known as TeX to make postscript and pdf documents. I find using tools like that easier than using the "easy" tools provided by microsoft. TeX and its macro subset LaTeX were originally written for mathematicians to use for publishing their papers. College math types adore TeX. Like most flexible tools it makes it easier to do very complex things at the expense of a slightly steeper initial learning curve. TeX looks complicated but actually a few tutorials and you can be at it nicely.

There is a TeX to gif converter which I would use to make small graphic files of equations to insert into html.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/textogif/textogif.html


Kiira

TeX to GIF
that looks interesting
I must learn how to use it
thanks kirra

[quote author="kiira"]
Microsoft Word has something called an equation editor. Mastering that would allow you to print out good looking documents with math in them.
[/quote]

Just for the archive: The eqation editor in OpenOffice IMHO is much easier to use. It is similar to TeX (very much simplified, though), but you see the final equation while typing in the source code. Of course you can still point and click stuff together.
;Matthias

[quote author="EZ81"]

Just for the archive: The eqation editor in OpenOffice IMHO is much easier to use. It is similar to TeX (very much simplified, though), but you see the final equation while typing in the source code. Of course you can still point and click stuff together.
;Matthias
[/quote]

Oh thanks Matthias that's good to know. I mostly use linux because it seems easier not to mention cheaper and less trouble than MS.

I played around with the math editor in OO write but I didn't get the hang of it in a few minutes so I'll have to work on it some more. The nice thing about it is that you can export the whole document to pdf easily. That's pretty convenient.

Kiira