Due at 9:10 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 3rd

1. Read the syllabus

The syllabus captures lots of important information. Please read the whole thing from head to toe before our Wednesday class so that we’re all on the same page. A link to the webpage version of the syllabus is available under the “reference” header on the left navigation bar; if you prefer a PDF (which makes for slightly prettier reading), that’s available here.

I’ll give a little oral quiz at the start of class Wednesday on some points addressed in the syllabus. I’m going to call on people at random. If I get the sense that people haven’t read it, we’ll need to use class time Wednesday to go over policy stuff, which I’d love not to have to do. So: please read it!

2. Get your kit (or start getting your kit)

If you’re in Pittsburgh and able to go on your own, please go to the bookstore on campus and pick up a course kit.
If you’re in Pittsburgh and not able to get to the bookstore, please let me know and I’ll try to work out a drop-off at your residence or another place.
If you’re not in Pittsburgh, we’d like to mail you your kit! Please write an email to help@ideate.andrew.cmu.edu saying that you’re in 60-223 and would like a course kit. Include the address they should mail the kit to, as well as your phone number (shippers usually require this).

As you may recall from today’s visitor Sara Longo, and from this section of the syllabus, this semester we’re conducting some research on improving student documentation and physical computing learning. If you choose to contribute, you will be helping us create better and richer materials for student learning, aaaaaaand as an added bonus, prticipants will get a $25 gift certificate at the conclusion of the semester. To sign up for the study, please fill out this short-and-sweet form.

4. Do some asynchronous learning on electronics

For the time being, Canvas is being fussy, and so I’m simply posting the videos I’d like you to watch down below. In total, these sum to 1 hour 15 minutes of lectures. Please watch them in order, either here on this page or on YouTube. Feel free to speed them up or slow them down, of course.

These lectures cover some important elementary ideas behind electronics, including how we can draw schematics to represent circuits and the basic mathematics that describe electrical flow in a circuit. (Starting on Wednesday, we’ll put these ideas into action, but for now, it’s just going to be some stage-setting theory.)

If you feel like you know this stuff already, you are welcome to watch the videos at high speed, and/or skip ones that cover familiar material.

In any case, take notes and be sure to actually try to figure things out as I ask you to in the videos! If you just sit and watch as drool comes out of the corner of your mouth, odds are you’re not going to emerge from the hour of video much wiser.

a. Electronics: schematic basics (video 16) (14 minutes)