Watt a course!!

Electronics Lab is one of the most amusing courses this semester. I have never pretended to be fascinated by the virtues of pure silicon and germanium stringed together with the help of resistors and capacitances into a flimsy, unreliable circuit. But there is something purely comical about the theory when it assumes the concrete shape of fit-in-my-fingernail capacitors and “how-many-ohms-is-that?” resistors!

For today’s EC lab, Kalpana and me had teamed up with Mani and Malathi, which in itself is good for a few laughs. I swear, you must listen to the dialogue between these two to get some solid enjoyment out of life. She views him with bemusement, while he treats her with condescension. The combi is truly fantastic to watch, trust me!

Anyway, my jinx with modern electronics struck home once again, as all the other circuits (except the one yours truly had made) were up and working in no time at all. Forget astable, we felt that we were lucky enough to get something on the CRO. The squiggles on the LCD display looked as if an inspired Picasso had been let loose into the damn instrument, and we got everything on it but the wave we so badly wanted.

After three hours of pure electronics torture, with timely (and completely unhelpful) inputs from the oh-so-friendly lab assistants, we made the sane decision of relegating this experiment to the next lab session.