What is Digg?38 Comments
- Johnnie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13itistoday:
The intro engineering explanation is usually the idea of a water pipe. First of all transistors are three port devices, when speaking of BJT transisters (as the article is) they are named base, emitter, collector; for a MOSFETs they are named gate, source, drain. The two types work essentially the same. The names don't really matter, they are named that way for historical reasons. Imagine a giant water pipe that feeds an entire city, so its huge. This would be your emitter to collecter (bjt) connection. Now imagine some open/close valve that is controlled by a tiny water pipe, this would be the base. So by controlling the base with a tiny amount of water, you can control a giant flow across the emitter collector junction. Thats pretty much the jist of it.
Now in terms of real devices, you replace water with electrons and holes, and you pretty much have the first day's lecture of a solid state devices class down. - Warpling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I made an animation in 6th grade on how transistors work in flash, pretty sweet. I wish I still had animation.
BTW - old teachers always give A 's if you use flash - burke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7How transistors REALLY work.
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/transis.html - goalieca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I've always been partial to this source myself. Actually used it in 2nd year engineering.
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
Britney spears guide to semiconductor physics. :D - beni, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8The problem with a site like Digg is that users are idiots.
- eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Transistors can source and sink current at the same time. The only problem is that the magic smoke gets out.
- GrendelT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yep - They're OK. that's about it.
I guess if I really wanted to know I'd click here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=How%20Transistors%20Work - Clearz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ouch my eyes hurt. That site is so 1995.
- shaherazad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What's wrong with articles like this.
I want to know how transistors work, and apparently other people do as well. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4 Maybe you didn't need to read the article, but maybe someone else would like to learn.
Can you tell me how many transist0rs are contained in your brand of microprocessor?
Do you know the difference between a pnp junction and an npn junction? What about mosfet or darlington types?
If your answer is "none" you don't need to be making any comments about how digg isn't about tech, as you are a "n00b".
It will take you a little while to google it, unless you cut and paste the retort here.
P.S. The "Emitter" doesn't light up, you must be confused, I heard mdma will do that to you.
Of course you may be talking about light emitting diodes, but they don't have emitters, only cathode and anode. - itistoday, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Now *that's* an explanation.
- ydt89, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah i know, i did my history project in flash and the teacher barely even looked at it, he just said it was a really cool animation and gave me an A....
- kalleanka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For all you transistor lovers out there who can't get enough of transistors.
Here is another very interesting article related to transistors that we could try to get to the front page:
http://digg.com/hardware/How_Transistors_work_(featuring_Wikipedia) - saitou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@kelleanka: Just because the title doesn't contain "Amazing Web2.0 AJAX Blog interface!!", doesn't make the article less interesting.
In fact, I'd prefer 100 articles like this over a link to ULTRA-COKE-MENTOS-EXPERIMENT or some of the other crap you digg.
It's also interesting that this article managed to bring several intelligent posters out of the woodwork.
@catfive: I agree, although it's not as bad as TheStarmans MS DEBUG tutorial that was posted the other day :P - Roger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Those are bipolar transistors BTW. When you're talking about digital circuits its mostly MOS transistors, which are a bit different and much more like ideal switches.
Not a terrible article either way. - Splitt3rxx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3lets see, you run power through both sides, and then hook somethign up to teh gate, and when it makes a connection, the shiny LED on teh other end of teh emitter lights up, I didn't need to read the article :D
- itistoday, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Just skimming over that page gives me the impression that they did a poor job explaining how it works--too technical. I thought that a transistor was simply a device that would vary its output voltage/current in certain ways depending on different input voltages, or something like that. Can anyone here explain it in layman's terms, you know, the "big picture" view?
- hapax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Transistors -- more than meets the eye
- savmac, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thanks for the explanation Johnnie. One question though, isn't that basically how an electronic relay works? An electrical switch controlled by another electrical current? Is the main difference that a transistor is solid state "silicon" technology while a relay is REALLY old school tech.
I really don't know what I'm talking about so I could be way off. - lexbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Heh heh. That's almost as good as RouterGod Magazine.
http://www.routergod.com/ - noouch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We learned stuff like this in eighth grade over here in Germany. Still, very informative for people new to electronics.
- bluephoenix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Seriously... digg users these days don't even understand what this site used to be like, they want digg to become ebaumsworld for christ sake. I applaud the semi-return to hardcore tech. I wish more of this would go front page more often.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3After after looking at this crappy explanation, I'm sure that question remains.
- WarrenG1983, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Seriously, this is bad.
If you're gonna try explaining transistors you need to go into the p-type and n-type materials and explain the behaviour of the electrons and the "holes" (the electron-vacancies). I didn't bother reading through the article, but (as it was in my Analog Electronics course I took last semester) a simple schematic of a BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor) and it's doped materials is the first place to start.
I also ask: why is this front page? - dielawn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i was really high when watching the little gif...took me a while to get it. im still high now.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1 @eclectro
LOL, you are showing your age.Either that, or you know a little about old school. - solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It really isn't "How transistors work", it's actually "How transistor circuits work".
There wasn't a dope or a hole to be seen in the article. - catfive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Wow that was great! Hope he writes one on how to design killer FrontPage sites!
- MetaDFF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Glancing through this website, I would say this is a "How basic analog circuits work" and not a "How transistors work" website.
I would peg the level of diffculty of this material at about a 1st or 2nd year electrical engineering program. - mcarolan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1hehe beni just called himself an idiot.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The problem with this article is that it is far too technical for any of you who aren't Electrical Engineers (or in certain cases, Computer Engineers, depending on if you went to a Software focus institution or a Hardware focus institution). Furthermore, it is advertised as explaining what a transistor is and how it works, not what the common applications are and how to build a circuit around them.
It also reeks of 4th grade science teacher, using images that look like they've existed from the beginning of time, and really spastic language.
...it's better than just linking to Wikipedia (or the Google results for "How a transistor works"), but not by much. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1mod down
- nailbunny, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5first thought: this is dumb, how did this make the front?
second thought: wait, how DO they work? - synaesthesia, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Dont post things that are just OK, post things that are freakin awesome.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2 Because maybe the techies like to dumbfound the FARK trolls?
- kalleanka, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Is it only me, or is Digg starting to lose focus?
How the heck did this article make it all the way to the front page? - shindig111, on 10/12/2007, -16/+4this is really old news.... i wonder how it got pushed to frontpage....
- Celeron, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2Alot of old news has been on the front page lately. Maybe people want to be reminded again.
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