Teaching

[ Courses | Tutorial Documents | Downloads | Learning | Lego Mindstorm]

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answer come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could produce such a question. - Charles Babbage.
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Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

One hears that university teaching is teaching students problem solving skills. Here are my thoughts on problem solving.

Downloads

• PSpice Student 9.1 (27000 kb) PSpice Documentation (13000 kb zip)
• PSAT (power system analysis toolbox) - matlab toolbox , documentation
• MuPAD Light 2.5.3 (with Scilab) (26000 kb) - MuPAD is a symbolic mathematics package like Maple.
  First download the package and install it. You need to get the key to use the software for more than 30 days. To get the key go to their TAN server and register yourself. If you want MuPAD without scilab then register for MuPAD Light for windows. If you want it with scilab you need to register twice: (a) register and get a key for MuPAD Light 2.5.3 for windows first and then click the detail button next to older and in that choose the option of scilab link for MuPAD Light 2.5.3 for windows, this will give you another key. If something goes wrong with the registration or obtaining a key, start again from scratch. I have installed it only for windows but I believe it's easier for Linux. The registration menu item is under the Help menu item.
  (MuPAD quick reference   (pdf))
• Scilab 4.1 (with Scicos - simulink like package) (10000 kb) Introduction to Scilab (tar.gz). Scilab is a matlab like package. A good to Scicos introduction is a paper by Ramine Nikoukhah.
• [ Useful Matlab commands | Useful Scilab commands ]
• Robotics Toolbox for Matlab This is a local copy of the package from Robotics Toolbox for Matlab. That site is maintained by the author of this package, Peter Cork of the CSIRO, Australia. His site also has links to other public domain software for robotics.
• A good solution for Lego Mindstorm seems to be to get (for more details look at my help page):
  1. BricxCC latest version
  2. setup executable for cygwin
  3. minimal brickOS and leJOS for BricxCC for BrickOS

Tutorial Documents

• An Introduction to Maple [html | pdf]
• SPICE [ html | pdf ] Tutorial
• PSpice [ pdf ] Tutorial
• Inside SPICE [pdf] Tutorial
• Introduction to Matlab, Maple and PSpice [ html | pdf ]
• Points to Note about Superposition and Thevenin Theorems [ html | pdf ].
• Response to a sinusoid [html | pdf ] from a system transfer function.
• Solution of a second order homogeneous ordinary differential equation [ html | pdf ].
• Step response of a second order system (complete analysis) [ html | pdf ].
• Second order system with a zero (detailed analysis) [ pdf ].
• Introduction to Bode plots. [ html | pdf ]
• Differential Amplifier Analysis pdf
• Some notes on matlab
• Notes on Scilab and Scicos
• Notes on Lego Mindstorm
• A brief introduction to FFT
• Tutorial documents on phase-locked loop (PLL): Introduction to PLL, Colpitts oscillator, frequency modulation circuit, etc. [link to the web page]

• A Maple Tutorial
• Maple in Action-A sixty-two page comprehensive tutorial in postscript form.
• Mathematical Computation Using Maple V - 1999 tutorial from Michigan State University
• Spice 3 Tutorial (html format) - School of Physics, University of Exeter
• Introduction to Scilab (external link)
• Control with Model Uncertainty (Robust Control) - A Tutorial Note by K. Astrom (340 kb, pdf)
• History of Feedback Control (Chapter 1: Introduction to Modern Control Theory, in:
  F.L. Lewis, Applied Optimal Control and Estimation, Prentice-Hall, 1992.)

Courses

I am on SSP during 2013.

Final Year Projects-2009
CDF Students-2009

Notes from some other courses that I offer.

• ZEIT4224 Power Electronics and Electrical Drives
• ZITE3214 Power Electronics and Electrical Drives
• ZEIT3502 Vibration and Control Engineering
• Control Theory 1
• Control Theory 2
• Robotics
• Electronics 4
• Fourth Year Laboratory Exercises
• Control Quiz
• Signals and Systems
• Electronics 3
• Mechatronics 1
• Circuit Theory

Analogue Workbench

Lego Mindstorm

Lego Mindstorm Help Page
Keith McGrath's Vacuum Cleaner Project 2005
Trevor Lu's summer 2005-06 PID control of path following robot

Messages:
Farewell 2005
Teach Less not More - UNSW09 Forum Poster

Time-Table:
[ Time-Table Session 2 - 2009 ]

Old Time-Tables:
[ Time-Table Session 1 - 2005 | Time-Table Session 2 - 2005 | Time-Table Session 1 - 2007 | Time-Table Session 2 - 2007 | Time-Table Session 2 - 2008 | Time-Table Session 2 - 2009 ]

Learning

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
Thomas Szasz - Author, Professor of Psychiatry (1920- )

Learning is all about going deeper and deeper. To see what probing deeper means, please have a look at an article which takes you very deep in reply to a simple question: Why is the sky blue? No special tools are needed apart from the desire and determination to probe deeper.