Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Experiment 4 complete

In this experiment I used a 1k ohms resistor, 5v1 Zener diode connected in reverse bias and a 1N4007 Si Diode connected in forward bias with the circuit set up in series. I can immediatly predict V1 from previous experiments with zener diodes in reverse bias by understanding that the Zener diode connected in reverse bias has a breakdown voltage of 5.1V, therefore V1 will be 5.1V. I can also predict V2 by knowing that the silicone diode has a knee voltage of 0.7 Volts, and will operate once this 0.7 volts has been reached. The diode does not require any excess amount of voltage so V2 will be 0.7V. With this knowledge i can get V3 by adding these voltages together. V3 = 5.1V + 0.7V = 5.8V. Because this circuit is in series i can now get V4 by subtracting V3 from Vs. V4 = 10V - 5.8V = 4.2V.

Then measuring the voltage drop with my voltmeter i recorded the results using 10V and 15V.

In my recordings I noticed that the voltage drop across the diodes did not change when i varried the Voltage from 10V to 15V. This is because the zener diode constantly regulates the voltage to 5V1, and the 1N4007 diode only requires 0.7V to operate. The resistor on the other hand almost doubled the amount of voltage drop on itself when I increased the Vs to 15v. This is because the sum of V3 will always equate to 5.8V.

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