Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In the meeting of my Integrated Computer Systems lecture for the fourth week of the second term, I stopped our discussion on the parallel port for a while so that we could talk about analog to digital converters, which in a conference with other teachers, the senior students never discussed or handled in any of their other classes.

Since this class is the closest (or first) that they could come to the computer measuring quantities that analog meters have been doing the job for them since, it fell to me to teach them the principle.

To make it theoretical, I just gave them the formulas and computations if the limit of the ADC was a certain number of volts, and if there was a variation in the number of bits the output would have.

Realistically, I think there are only eight-, twelve- and sixteen-bit ADC's available commercially, although thirty-two-bit converters are not impossible nowadays for more accuracy.

To determine accuracy though, I gave them a three by three table to check if higher or lower bits are more precise, or higher or lower range limits. That was their assignment for next meeting.

I also gave them the possibility of measuring voltage values larger than the range of the ADC, for which they will have to use a voltage divider and a multiplier resistor just like in our galvanometer experiment more than a year ago, which they all forgot.

Application of what they have learned will have to wait until the laboratory meeting where I will let them handle the IC's of the ADC.

Also, next time I will be talking to them about how to measure currents with an ADC, just like with the galvanometer experiment again, where an basic ammeter is made to measure voltage and resistence with a few components added.

There was also one computer science student sit in who was thankful for the insights he won't learn in any subject in his course. And he and some classmates are asking me to give them lessons in assembly language as well, again not in their flowchart.

Session 1347 isn't taught some basic programming languages. Class dismissed.