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Portal:Electronics

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The Electronics Portal

Modern surface-mount electronic components on a printed circuit board, with a large integrated circuit at the top

Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other electrically charged particles. It is a subfield of physics and electrical engineering which uses active devices such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits to control and amplify the flow of electric current and to convert it from one form to another, such as from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or from analog signals to digital signals.

Electronic devices have significantly influenced the development of many aspects of modern society, such as telecommunications, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits in response to global demand. The semiconductor industry is one of the global economy's largest and most profitable industries, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. (Full article...)

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Credit: Library of Congress, Levin C. Handy
Thomas Edison and his early phonograph.

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Carl Friedrich Gauss (Gauß) (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. Gauss was a child prodigy, and made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. The cgs unit for magnetic induction was named gauss in his honor.

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Group Captain "Paddy" Green achieved most of his 11 confirmed kills in this Mk. IV-equipped Beaufighter.

Radar, Aircraft Interception, Mark IV (AI Mk. IV), also produced in the USA as SCR-540, was the world's first operational air-to-air radar system. Early Mk. III units appeared in July 1940 on converted Bristol Blenheim light bombers, while the definitive Mk. IV reached widespread availability on the Bristol Beaufighter heavy fighter by early 1941. On the Beaufighter, the Mk. IV arguably played a role in ending the Blitz, the Luftwaffe's night bombing campaign of late 1940 and early 1941.

Early development was prompted by a 1936 memo from Henry Tizard on the topic of night fighting. The memo was sent to Robert Watson-Watt, director of the radar research efforts, who agreed to allow physicist Edward George "Taffy" Bowen to form a team to study the problem of air interception. The team had a test bed system in flights later that year, but progress was delayed for four years by emergency relocations, three abandoned production designs and Bowen's increasingly adversarial relationship with Watt's replacement, Albert Rowe. Ultimately, Bowen was forced from the team just as the system was finally maturing. (Full article...)

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Columbia is a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics for NASA. The supercomputer was installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility in 2004. According to the TOP500 list, it is currently the eighth fastest computer in the world running at 51.87 teraflops, or 51.87 trillion floating point calculations per second. It is composed of twenty SGI Altix 3000 nodes each of which have 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors bringing the total number of processors to 10,240. It was named in honour of the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

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Credit: commons:User:FDominec
This list of electronic components is intended to make drawing of schematics simple, fast and very flexible.

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