The July 2005 issue of Nuts & Volts magazine (which used to be Popular
Electronics) describes two very simple experiments, explaining the
special "field effect transistor (FET)." Without this device, we could
not have modern million-transistor integrated circuits, and the article
tells why, in easy-to-understand terms. Back issues of the magazine are
available via the website
http://www.nutsvolts.com/toc_Pages/jul05toc.htm
. (If you go down that
web page to the "Field Effect..." article, and click on the diagram, it
gets larger.) Also, some public libraries have the magazine.
There is more explanation of the FET (and related subjects) in the
textbook written by me, if you visit amazon.com, select books, and
search for the author, Shanefield. Be sure to look at the 5-star
Customer Reviews --- these say the whole book is unusually easy to read
(in spite of the somewhat off-putting title!). Note that cheaper
versions of the book can be bought from used-book sellers, via amazon,
and some public libraries have the book (or will obtain it).
Of course, there are loads of similar books (many quite good!), but not
with such clear connections between "how it works" and the im****tant
industrial aspects.
Dan Shanefield
http://homepage.mac.com/shanefield/Resume1.html
(In case you have some spare time --- here are my 5 very-short, true
stories about things going dreadfully wrong, when I was at Bell Labs,
before I became a Rutgers professor. AT&T was then the biggest company
in the world, and I was able to really screw things up in a big way,
which I sometimes did, altho there was always a [somewhat] happy
ending. Might be good stories to entertain students:
http://homepage.mac.com/shanefield/Resume19.html
)
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