Circuits I

Course Description

Circuits I covers the basic analysis of DC and AC electric circuits.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, EEL is the Electrical Engineering prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Science and Engineering. Many Florida institutions carry the same material as the integrated EEL3111C, which is offered at approximately 8 institutions — making this the most widely taught course in the EEL prefix.

This is the foundation course of the electrical engineering major, and everything downstream assumes it. Circuits II, signals and systems, electronics, control, communications and power all take it as given. The catalog description is one sentence long, which understates the course considerably — the sentence covers Kirchhoff's laws, nodal and mesh analysis, network theorems, first- and second-order transients, phasors, and AC power, which is a full term of dense material.

The conceptual step most students underestimate is the move from DC to AC. Phasor analysis replaces differential equations with complex algebra, and it works because every voltage and current in a linear circuit driven at one frequency is a sinusoid at that frequency — so only magnitude and phase need tracking. Students who accept phasors as a recipe pass this course and then struggle in Circuits II, where the same reasoning generalises to the Laplace domain and the recipe runs out.

⚠ Why this guide exists under this number

Many Florida institutions carry this material as a single integrated course with a C suffix. UWF instead runs a separate lecture and a separate laboratory, each with its own SCNS number, and this guide documents the UWF lecture. Its laboratory partner is documented separately in this repository. ⚠ SCNS equivalency does not cross numbers, so a transfer between the integrated and split forms is evaluated by hand rather than automatically — carry a syllabus in either direction.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, prerequisites, and a description. It does not publish contact hours, a lecture and laboratory split, or terms of offering for any course. It does publish a material and supply fee notice on the minority of courses that carry one — and maintains a separate Material & Supply and Equipment Fees section of the catalog — so the absence of a fee notice on this entry is meaningful, while the fee amount is not published here. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is therefore derived. The figure here applies the standard lecture convention of 15 contact hours per credit, giving 45 hours for a 3-semester-hour course. Confirm the meeting schedule with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Define charge, current, voltage, power, and energy and use consistent sign conventions.
• Apply the passive sign convention correctly in power calculations.
• Describe ideal circuit elements: resistors, capacitors, inductors, and sources.
• Apply Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's current and voltage laws.
• Simplify networks using series and parallel combination and source transformation.
• Apply voltage and current division.
• Analyse circuits using systematic nodal analysis.
• Analyse circuits using systematic mesh analysis.
• Apply superposition to linear circuits.
• Determine Thevenin and Norton equivalent circuits.
• Apply the maximum power transfer theorem.
• Analyse circuits containing operational amplifiers in ideal configurations.
• Analyse first-order RC and RL transient response.
• Determine time constants and initial and final conditions.
• Analyse second-order RLC transient response and classify damping.
• Represent sinusoidal signals as phasors.
• Determine impedance and admittance of circuit elements.
• Analyse AC circuits in the phasor domain using nodal and mesh methods.
• Compute real, reactive, apparent and complex power, and power factor.
• Apply power factor correction.
• Verify circuit analysis using simulation software.

Optional Outcomes

• Analyse balanced three-phase circuits.
• Analyse magnetically coupled circuits and ideal transformers.
• Determine frequency response of simple networks.
• Analyse resonance in series and parallel RLC circuits.
• Apply Laplace methods to circuit transients at an introductory level.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Charge, current, voltage, power, energy
• The passive sign convention
• Ideal circuit elements and sources
• Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's laws
• Series and parallel reduction; source transformation
• Voltage and current division
• Nodal analysis
• Mesh analysis
• Superposition
• Thevenin and Norton equivalents
• Maximum power transfer
• Ideal operational amplifier circuits
• First-order RC and RL transients
• Second-order RLC transients and damping
• Sinusoids and phasor representation
• Impedance and admittance
• AC circuit analysis
• AC power and power factor
• Power factor correction
• Circuit simulation

Optional Topics

• Three-phase circuits
• Magnetically coupled circuits
• Frequency response
• Resonance
• Introductory Laplace methods

Resources & Tools

• Nilsson and Riedel, Electric Circuits — the most widely adopted text for this sequence, and the one most Florida programmes use.
• Alexander and Sadiku, Fundamentals of Electric Circuits and Irwin and Nelms — the standard alternatives; all three cover the same ground.
• LTspice (Analog Devices) — free; the industry-standard SPICE simulator, and worth learning here because practising engineers use it.
• Falstad circuit simulator — free and browser-based; it animates current flow, which builds intuition faster than anything else at this level.
• MATLAB or Python with NumPy — useful for solving the linear systems that nodal and mesh analysis produce; check UWF's campus MATLAB licence before purchasing.
• MIT OpenCourseWare 6.002 Circuits and Electronics — free lectures covering this material.
• A scientific calculator that handles complex numbers natively — this is not a luxury for the AC half of the course; confirm which models are permitted in examinations.
• IEEE student membership — inexpensive, and the UWF student branch is worth joining in the second year.

Career Pathways

• Electrical engineers — SOC 17-2071; electronics engineers — SOC 17-2072. This course is a gateway rather than a destination.
• Every downstream electrical engineering specialism — power, control, communications, electronics, and computer engineering all build on it directly.
• Florida defence and aerospace — L3Harris (Melbourne, Palm Bay), Lockheed Martin (Orlando), Northrop Grumman (Melbourne, St. Augustine).
• Northwest Florida defence engineering — NAS Pensacola, Eglin Air Force Base, NSA Panama City, which is UWF's immediate hiring region.
• Florida utilities — Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy Florida, TECO, JEA, Gulf Power.
• Space Coast aerospace — the launch and payload ecosystem around Cape Canaveral.
• Electrical and electronic engineering technicians — SOC 17-3023.

Special Information

⚠⚠ The asterisk in a UWF prerequisite means the course may be taken at the same time

• UWF's catalog marks a concurrent course with an asterisk, defined on the catalog's Course Information page as: "This course may be taken prior to or during the same term."
• ⚠ This is the single most useful piece of notation in the UWF engineering catalog, and it is easy to miss. A prerequisite written without an asterisk must be completed first; one written with an asterisk may be taken in the same term.
• The practical effect is on time to degree. Reading an asterisked prerequisite as a hard prerequisite adds a term to the sequence for no reason, and in a tightly chained major like electrical engineering that error compounds down the whole plan.
• Confirm with an advisor before relying on it, and note that the registration system, not the catalog text, is what actually enforces the rule.

⚠⚠ EEL3111 and EEL3111L each list the other — they are bound together

• UWF lists EEL3111L* among the prerequisites for EEL3111, and lists EEL3111* as the prerequisite for EEL3111L. The requirement runs in both directions.
• ⚠ The practical effect is that the pair is effectively a single unit. Because each names the other with the concurrent asterisk, a student normally enrols in both in the same term — taking the lecture alone is not the intended path and may not be permitted.
• ⚠⚠ This is the strongest form of the split-course binding found in the UWF catalog, and it is the clearest evidence that the lecture and laboratory are two halves of one course rather than a course and an optional companion.
• Budget for both. The pair is 4 semester hours in total, not 3, and the laboratory carries its own weekly session.
• Confirm with an advisor — the registration system, not the catalog text, is what enforces this.

⚠⚠ The prerequisite structure has three branches — read it carefully

• UWF publishes: (PHY2049/L) AND (EGN3204* OR EGM3344*) AND ((EEL3111L* AND MAC2313)).
• PHY2049/L is physics with its laboratory, written in UWF's combined notation, and it is not asterisked — it must be complete. This is the real gate on the course, since electricity and magnetism is where the physical concepts come from.
• MAC2313 is not asterisked either and must be complete.
• The engineering analysis branch (EGN3204 or EGM3344) is asterisked and may be taken in the same term.
• ⚠ EEL3111L is asterisked and must be taken with or before this course — see the reciprocal note above.
• ⚠⚠ Plan PHY2049 and MAC2313 early. They are the two hard gates, and a delay in either pushes the entire electrical engineering sequence back a year because everything downstream chains through this course.

⚠⚠ Where students lose Circuits I

• Sign conventions, more than anything else. The passive sign convention determines whether an element absorbs or delivers power, and a sign error early in a problem propagates silently to a wrong final answer. Fix the convention once and apply it mechanically.
• ⚠ Nodal and mesh analysis are systematic methods, and shortcuts defeat them. Students who try to reason a circuit out intuitively lose to those who write the equations without thinking. Pick a reference node, write every equation, then solve.
• ⚠⚠ Complex arithmetic must become fluent before the AC unit. Conversion between rectangular and polar form, multiplication, division, and roots are used constantly, and hesitation there makes every AC problem slow. Practise this specifically rather than hoping it comes.
• Supernodes and supermeshes are where dependent sources trip people up. They are not exotic; they follow directly from the method, and working several examples fixes them.
• Second-order transients require identifying initial conditions correctly, including the derivative at time zero, which is the step most often botched.
• Simulate to check, not to solve. SPICE confirms an answer; examinations do not permit it.

⚠ Workload and preparation

• Budget 8 to 12 hours a week outside class. This is a demanding course and the material is strictly cumulative.
• Work problems by hand and in quantity. Reading worked solutions produces a false confidence that the first examination corrects.
• Remember the paired laboratory. EEL3111L runs alongside and carries its own weekly session and reports — the real weekly commitment is for 4 credits, not 3.
• ⚠ This is the course where students discover whether the major suits them. Struggling here is common and is not by itself a verdict; struggling here without adjusting how you study usually is.

FE exam relevance

The Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam is the first step toward Professional Engineer licensure, and in Florida it is administered under the Florida Board of Professional Engineers. Most students take the FE Electrical and Computer exam in their final year. Licensure matters less in electrical engineering than in civil — the industrial exemption means most electrical engineers in manufacturing and product work never need a PE — but it is required for consulting practice, for sealing designs, and for power and building-systems work, which is exactly where Florida's utility and infrastructure employment sits.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Lecture with problem sets and examinations, with the laboratory carried separately by EEL3111L.
• Typically taken in the second year, and it gates essentially the whole upper-division sequence.
• UWF publishes no contact hours, lecture and laboratory split, or terms of offering for any course, and no material and supply fee is noted on this entry — though EEL3111L does carry one. Confirm the offering pattern with the department.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement. ⚠ For engineering specifically, ABET-accredited programmes commonly require that upper-division engineering coursework be taken in residence, so transferability of the credit and applicability to the degree are separate questions.

EEL3111 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida, taken with the 1-semester-hour EEL3111L. Institutions carrying the integrated EEL3111C cover the same material in one course, and the transfer evaluation between the two forms is done by hand.