Course Description
EEE 3300L Electronics I Laboratory is the 1-credit laboratory that accompanies EEE 3300 Electronics I. It is where the diode and transistor models developed in the lecture meet real devices — and where students discover that a transistor’s β is not the number in the textbook, that a bias point drifts as the device warms, and that an oscilloscope probe has capacitance.
Two Florida institutions carry this course: Florida A&M University and Florida State University, which share the joint FAMU–FSU College of Engineering. Both carry it at 1 credit and both title it Electronics I Laboratory. FSU describes it plainly as a course that supports EEE 3300, and lists EEE 3300 as a co-requisite — the two are taken in the same term.
The Statewide Course Numbering System files EEE 3300L against the same statewide record as the lecture, titled Electronics, covering “diode models and circuits; DC biasing of bipolar-junction and field-effect transistors; small- and large-signal transistor models; frequency analysis of single-stage AC amplifiers.” The laboratory works through that same list with instruments in hand.
⚠ Budget time by contact hours, not by credits. A 1-credit engineering laboratory typically meets for two to three hours a week in a scheduled session, and the report written afterwards routinely takes as long again. It consumes far more of the week than its credit value suggests, and it is the course most often underestimated in a heavy junior-year schedule.
Learning Outcomes
Required Outcomes
- Operate the standard electronics bench — DC power supply, function generator, digital multimeter and digital oscilloscope — correctly and safely, including proper grounding and probe compensation.
- Measure the forward and reverse characteristics of a diode and compare the result against the ideal-diode and constant-voltage-drop models.
- Build and characterise rectifier circuits, measuring ripple voltage and relating it to the filter capacitor value and load current.
- Measure BJT and MOSFET output and transfer characteristics and extract device parameters (β, VT, transconductance) from measured data.
- Construct a DC bias network, measure the resulting Q-point, and account quantitatively for the difference between the designed and measured operating point.
- Measure the midband voltage gain, input resistance and output resistance of a single-stage amplifier and compare each against small-signal prediction.
- Measure an amplifier’s frequency response, identify the lower and upper cut-off frequencies, and relate them to coupling, bypass and device capacitances.
- Identify and correct common bench faults — a floating ground, a saturated transistor, an unintended oscillation, a mis-set oscilloscope coupling.
- Record measurements with appropriate precision and units, and report results with an honest statement of experimental uncertainty.
- Write a clear technical laboratory report presenting objective, method, data, analysis and conclusion.
Optional Outcomes
- Correlate measurement against a SPICE simulation of the same circuit and explain the discrepancies.
- Use a curve tracer or semiconductor parameter analyser to obtain full device characteristic families.
- Measure amplifier distortion, slew rate or noise.
- Design a circuit to a stated specification rather than building a supplied schematic (an open-ended final laboratory in some sections).
- Use a spectrum analyser to observe harmonic distortion in a large-signal amplifier.
Major Topics
Required Topics
- Instrumentation and measurement practice — oscilloscope triggering, AC and DC coupling, probe compensation and loading, function generator output impedance, and the difference between what the instrument reads and what the circuit does.
- Diode characterisation — the i–v curve, forward drop against current, reverse leakage, and Zener breakdown.
- Rectifier and power-conditioning circuits — half-wave and full-wave rectification, capacitor filtering, ripple measurement, and shunt regulation.
- Diode wave-shaping — clippers and clampers observed on the oscilloscope against the predicted transfer characteristic.
- BJT characterisation — output characteristic family, extraction of β and the Early voltage, and the spread of β across nominally identical devices.
- FET characterisation — transfer and output characteristics, threshold voltage extraction, and triode-versus-saturation identification.
- Bias network construction and measurement — voltage-divider bias, emitter degeneration, Q-point measurement and thermal drift.
- Single-stage amplifier measurement — common-emitter/common-source gain, follower behaviour, input and output resistance by the half-voltage method.
- Frequency response measurement — point-by-point gain against frequency, Bode plotting from measured data, and cut-off frequency determination.
- Technical reporting — laboratory notebook practice, data tables, properly labelled plots, uncertainty and error discussion.
Optional Topics
- SPICE correlation exercises comparing measured and simulated results.
- Large-signal behaviour: clipping, distortion and the onset of non-linearity.
- Multistage or cascode amplifier measurement.
- Printed circuit board layout effects, parasitic inductance and decoupling.
- An open-ended design-and-build project as the final laboratory.
Resources & Tools
- The laboratory normally follows the lecture text — most commonly Microelectronic Circuits (Sedra and Smith) — together with a departmental laboratory manual issued by the FAMU–FSU College of Engineering. The manual, not the textbook, is the operative document for each session.
- Bench instruments — digital storage oscilloscope (Tektronix TBS/TDS or Keysight DSOX series), function generator, triple-output DC bench supply, and a bench or handheld digital multimeter. Some laboratories use all-in-one USB instruments such as the Analog Discovery, which put the same functions on a laptop.
- Devices — 2N3904 and 2N3906 BJTs, 2N7000 MOSFETs, CD4007 MOSFET arrays, 1N4148 signal diodes, 1N400x rectifiers and 1N47xx Zeners; carbon-film resistors and electrolytic and ceramic capacitors.
- Datasheets from Texas Instruments, ON Semiconductor, Nexperia and Diodes Incorporated. Reading the minimum and maximum columns rather than the typical column is a specific habit this laboratory should instil.
- SPICE — LTspice or PSpice, where the laboratory includes a simulate-then-measure comparison.
- Standards and practice references: IPC-A-610 for workmanship expectations where soldering is involved, and NFPA 70E for electrical safety principles.
Career Pathways
- Test engineer and validation engineer (SOC 17-2072, Electronics Engineers) — measurement skill is the direct deliverable of this course and is what distinguishes a hire in these roles.
- Hardware design engineer and electronics engineer (SOC 17-2072); electrical engineer (SOC 17-2071).
- Failure analysis engineer and reliability engineer in semiconductor and defence electronics.
- Manufacturing and process engineer in electronics production, where interpreting bench measurement against specification is a daily task.
- Florida employers in these roles include Jabil (St. Petersburg), L3Harris (Palm Bay and Melbourne), Northrop Grumman (St. Augustine and Melbourne), Lockheed Martin (Orlando), Raytheon/RTX (Largo), Danfoss (Tallahassee), and NSWC Panama City, which recruits regularly from the FAMU–FSU College of Engineering.
- Employers consistently report that graduates arrive strong in simulation and weak at the bench. A student who can demonstrate real instrument fluency from this course has a concrete and uncommon advantage in interviews, and it is worth being able to describe a specific measurement you made and a specific fault you found.
Special Information
⚠⚠ This is a separate registration from the lecture
EEE 3300L is a separate course from EEE 3300, with its own enrolment and its own grade. FSU lists EEE 3300 as a co-requisite, so the two are taken in the same term, and the prerequisites are EEL 3112 and EEL 3112L, each with a grade of C− or better.
Three consequences follow, and all three are worth acting on:
- Register for both halves. Enrolling in the lecture and forgetting the laboratory is the most common error in this sequence, and it usually surfaces after the add/drop deadline — delaying the whole electronics sequence by a term.
- The pair is worth 4 credits (3 + 1), not 3. Comparing it against a 3-credit integrated course elsewhere is comparing unlike things.
- You receive two grades. The laboratory grade stands separately on the transcript and in the GPA. It is a 1-credit course that can nonetheless cost a student a letter grade of standing if reports are neglected.
⚠ Course-code variation across Florida
Only FAMU and FSU carry EEE 3300L. Elsewhere in Florida the same laboratory work is either folded into an integrated C course or numbered differently:
- EEE 3308L — University of West Florida (Electronics Laboratory, 1 credit, paired with EEE 3308).
- EEE 3308C — University of Florida, and EEE 3307C — University of Central Florida: the laboratory is integrated into the lecture course and there is no separate laboratory number.
SCNS equivalency does not cross course numbers, and laboratory credit is among the hardest to substitute because a receiving department frequently wants evidence of specific measurement competencies rather than a topic list. Keep the laboratory manual and a copy of at least one full report; they are far more persuasive to a curriculum committee than a syllabus alone.
Laboratory safety and conduct
Bench voltages in this laboratory are low — typically under 30 V — so the electrical shock hazard is limited, but it is not zero, and three specific hazards recur:
- Electrolytic capacitors installed backwards or over-volted can vent or rupture. Check polarity before applying power, every time.
- Components dissipating power get hot enough to burn. A transistor biased into an unintended high-current state will reach painful temperature in seconds.
- Soldering irons, where used, and the associated fume extraction.
Eye protection is normally required, food and drink are excluded from the bench area, and equipment must be powered down and the bench returned to its issued state at the end of a session. Follow the departmental laboratory safety briefing — attendance at it is generally a condition of participation.
Assessment and format
A 1-credit laboratory is normally assessed on pre-laboratory preparation, in-session performance and the written report, with the report carrying most of the weight. Pre-laboratory work — calculating expected values before the session — is not a formality: arriving without predicted values means you cannot tell a correct measurement from a faulty one while you are still at the bench and able to do something about it. Some sections add a practical examination in which a student must make a specified measurement unaided, which is the fairest test of the course’s actual objective.
Work is commonly done in pairs. Where it is, the report is usually still individual — check the syllabus, because shared data with individual analysis is the normal arrangement and submitting shared analysis is normally a violation.
Position in the curriculum
EEE 3300L sits in the junior year alongside EEE 3300, and precedes EEE 4301 Electronics II and its laboratory EEE 4301L. The measurement technique established here is assumed in every later laboratory in the degree, including the senior design sequence.
Articulation and transfer
SCNS records the course as guaranteed to transfer to an institution offering the same course. With only two Florida institutions carrying the number — and those two operating a joint college — the practical reach is narrow. Both carry it at 1 credit. The course is upper-division and carries no general-education or Gordon Rule designation.
AI Integration
A laboratory course is where AI assistance is least able to do the work and most useful at the edges, and the distinction is worth drawing explicitly.
Where it helps. Explaining what an unexpected oscilloscope trace indicates, suggesting an ordered fault-finding sequence when a circuit does not work, generating plotting and curve-fitting scripts for measured data, and improving the clarity of a report’s prose. Interpreting a datasheet parameter you have not met before is another genuine use.
⚠ Where it fails, and why it matters especially here. The characteristic failure is that a model will produce plausible-looking measurement data on request. Asked what a common-emitter amplifier’s gain measurement “should” look like, it will generate a clean table of numbers that fit the theory exactly — with none of the spread, drift or asymmetry that real measurement carries. That is not a measurement, and presenting it as one is data fabrication, which every engineering programme treats as among the most serious forms of academic misconduct, distinct from and more serious than ordinary plagiarism.
The coincidence worth naming is this: the entire purpose of this course is to teach that the real device does not match the model — that β varies threefold, that the bias point drifts, that the measured cut-off frequency sits below prediction because the probe loads the node. A generated dataset reproduces the model, not the device, and therefore contains precisely the information the course exists to remove from your assumptions. It is the one place where a confident, tidy answer is the strongest evidence that something is wrong.
The engineer’s responsibility. Measured data is a factual claim about a physical event that took place at a particular bench at a particular time. An engineer signs for it. In professional practice, fabricated test data is a matter for licensure boards and, in regulated sectors, for law — the habit of never reporting a number you did not observe starts in a course exactly like this one.
Academic integrity. FAMU and FSU both maintain academic honour policies that address AI-generated work, and laboratory reports are frequently governed by stricter rules than other assignments. Discussion of technique is usually permitted; generated data and generated analysis usually are not. Ask your instructor before using a tool, and disclose its use where the syllabus requires it.