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Portal:Electronics

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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 hugely 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 in response to global demand continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits. The semiconductor industry is one of the largest and most profitable sectors in the global economy, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. The electronics industry also encompasses other sectors that rely on electronic devices and systems, such as e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in online sales in 2017. (Full article...)

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James Prescott Joule, FRS (December 24, 1818 – October 11, 1889) was an English physicist, born in Sale. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work (see energy). This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI unit of work, the joule, is named after him. He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop the absolute scale of temperature, made observations on magnetostriction, and found the relationship between the current through a resistance and the heat dissipated, now called Joule's law.

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Capacitance is a measure of the amount of electric charge stored (or separated) for a given electric potential. The capacitance of the majority of capacitors used in electronic circuits is several orders of magnitude smaller than the farad. The energy (measured in joules) stored in a capacitor is equal to the work done to charge it.

In a capacitor, there are two conducting electrodes which are insulated from one another. The charge on the electrodes is +Q and -Q, and V represents the potential difference between the electrodes. The SI unit of capacitance is the farad; 1 farad = 1 coulomb per volt.

The capacitance can be calculated if the geometry of the conductors and the dielectric properties of the insulator between the conductors are known, such as above, where; C is the capacitance in farads, ε is the permittivity of the insulator used (or ε0 for a vacuum), A is the area of each plane electrode in square metres, d is the separation between the electrodes in metres. The equation is a good approximation if d is small compared to the other dimensions of the electrodes.

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Wi-Fi is a brand originally licensed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to describe the underlying technology of wireless local area networks (WLAN) based on the IEEE 802.11 specifications. It was developed to be used for mobile computing devices, such as laptops, in LANs, but is now increasingly used for more services, including Internet and VoIP phone access, gaming, and basic connectivity of consumer electronics such as televisions and DVD players, or digital cameras. More standards are in development that will allow Wi-Fi to be used by cars in highways in support of an Intelligent Transportation System to increase safety, gather statistics, and enable mobile commerce (see IEEE 802.11p).

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