Will I finally understand transistors?
He has instructions to only let cars down the major road if cars also come down the small road.
When a small trickle of cars come down the small road the intersection can act like a dimmer switch. It can also take a very small signal, and with a secondary more powerful input, amplify it.
But if you quickly alternate between no cars and lots of cars that dimmer switch acts like a toggle switch giving you 1s and 0s.
The physics is basically, when you sandwich two elements in close proximity that give up their electrons in a very specific way you get the macro phenomenon described above.
The reason the elements give up electrons this way also happens to be at the heart of a lot of cool concepts of math and is a demonstrable proof of some physics that used to be just theory. Learning the physics of transistors can teach you concepts that tie together the history of science from Ancient Greece to Quantum physics.
No signal is really “boosted” by some weird process. What happens is a very powerful DC signal (i.e constant) is selectively allowed through, being mediated by the input signal. The “volume knob” on a power amp works by ATTENUATING that constant DC signal prior to “amplification”
It seems like you're stuck focusing on where the energy comes from, hence wanting to talk about the "powerful DC signal" (eg power supply). But the concept of amplification says nothing about where the energy comes from - it's merely talking about the magnitude of a signal being increased. You can also say "an audio amplifier requires a power supply". Multiple concepts apply to the same situation! This is true everywhere in life, but it's easier to ignore for software and impossible to ignore for electronic design.
(I love that you’re passionate about the details and it is certainly beautiful to imagine it the way you describe. Im picturing an ocean and the mediation little birds flying down and sculpting the crests of waves. The attenuation is like the Venetian MOSE flood barriers.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_Awe:_The_Story_of_El...
If you really want to know how transistors work and how to use them properly it’s going to be difficult as they sit on a fairly large pile of algebra and theory. If you don’t know this you might be able to get simple circuits working by cutting and pasting bits but you won’t be able to get past that ever.
The best references on this are actually The Art of Electronics. Not necessarily the main book but the associated student manual. Also the book Experimental Methods in RF Design by Wes Hayward actually has the most useful functional description and modelling approach of transistors.
Usually I build out the DC bias model (static operating point), test it in LTspice, then add the AC/small signal model on top. Or large signal model for switching etc. Everything generally works unless I did something stupid or it’s RF where things get a little less predictable.
To go from single transistor to multi-transistor circuits was a big leap for me, but most of it is understanding how particular subcircuits work and recognizing them as blocks of a larger circuit.
The ideas and practices of the gnostics in general are just stupid.
If you can't explain how a PN junction, or its composites actually function simply, you don't understand what you are talking about. As simply but not more simply than necessary, without using math.
Mind, I don’t remember any of it, I never applied it, but at the time, it explained it to me.
I think the MOSFET circuit diagram has always made more sense to me because you can see intuitively see the “plunger” as the control input.
You summarize the past convestion in this thread. - Start with a overall summary in a single paragraph - Then show a bullet pointed list of the most interesting illustrative quotes from the piece - Then a bullet point list of the most unusual ideas - provide a longer summary that covers points not included already - Finally, Step by step/phase by phase understanding of the ideas discussed above