Monthly Archives: April 2011

Measuring Power with A Logarithmic Amplifier

Posted on 29-April-2011 by mathscinotes

One of our young engineers asked me why all of us old-timers like to use logarithmic amplifiers when we need to measure input signal power. The answer is simple -- power expressed in dB is a linear function of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics | Comments Off on Measuring Power with A Logarithmic Amplifier

Learning How Electronic Parts Work

Posted on 28-April-2011 by mathscinotes

Introduction A few years ago, I gave a lunch time talk on Mathcad to my hardware engineers. During the talk, one of the engineers mentioned that he starts a Mathcad worksheet when he is reading a part datasheet. While he … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics | 2 Comments

Bad Business Decisions

Posted on 22-April-2011 by mathscinotes

During a hallway discussion, the topic of bad business decisions came up. Everyone knows that a business can make a bad decision if they don't consider the facts and look at the statistics for every decision. It's no surprise that … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Comments Off on Bad Business Decisions

Air Conditioning Math

Posted on 16-April-2011 by mathscinotes

Introduction I get some strange phone calls. I recently received one from a customer who wanted to know how many "tons of air conditioning" he needed to cool some equipment he had purchased from my company. All air conditioning units … Continue reading →

Posted in Construction, History of Science and Technology | 1 Comment

Oxygen on Earth

Posted on 9-April-2011 by mathscinotes

As my regular readers can tell, I do not passively sit and watch television. While I am watching a program (history or science-oriented, nothing else), I have my computer right there and I actively research what is being said during the program. Last weekend, I was watching an interesting program on the History channel called "How the Earth was Made". This particular program was about the formation of the Earth and it contained an excellent section on the generation of atmospheric oxygen (transcript of program). In my opinion, the star of the show was a little rocky structure called a stromatolite (Figure 1). A stromatolite is a layered, rock-like structure formed when shallow-water sediments are trapped in films of microorganisms. Continue reading →

Posted in General Science, History of Science and Technology | 15 Comments