ELEC260

2016

Week 6 Tutorial/Homework

This week I want you to submit a more standard assignment. There will be no quiz. Instead
please prepare answers to the following questions and submit them via the link on iLearn. The
submission should be as a single pdf file. To achieve this you may wish to hand write parts of
your solution and scan them using any University photocopier (free). You may also prepare them
electronically.
The total points available for this assignment is 50, with 7 being awarded for presentation! This
means: all pages numbered as (#/max#), all pages have name and ID, every numeric answer is
boxed, underlined or in Bold font, these boxed answers should be to the appropriate # of
significant figures, handwriting is completely legible (engineers used to be famous for excellent
handwriting).

1.
(3 points)Show with a circuit diagram how a NC pushbutton switch can be
wired, with a 5 V supply and resistor(s), to provide a negative logic (active low)
reset signal to a microprocessor. The signal should be low only while the button is
held down.
2.
(9 points) A photoresistors resistance changes from 5 to 1 kOhm when
moved from dark to light. Sketch a circuit to convert this change to a changing
voltage. Analytically determine the value of the fixed resistor which maximizes the
voltage difference between light and dark. Hint: use the quotient rule.
3.
(10 points) A steel bar with a modulus (E) of 180 GPa and a cross section of
15mm x 3 mm is loaded in tension with an axial load of 50 kN.

a) What is the stress in the bar?

b) What is the strain in the bar?

c) If a strain gauge of gauge factor 2.115 and a resistance of 120 Ohm is
mounted on the bar in the axial direction, what is the change in resistance of the
gauge from the unloaded to the strained state?

d) If the gauge is placed in one branch of a Wheatstone bridge (R1) with the
other three legs having the same base resistance (R2=R3=R4=120 Ohm), what is
the output voltage of the bridge (Vout) in the strained state, as a function of the
excitation voltage?
5.
(20 points) Analyze data from the usb accelerometer. The data, from a CO2
powered model car is available as a download from ilearn. Prepare separate plots
of x,y and z acceleration during the brief, straight-line race. The units of
acceleration are 10-2 G, where 1G=9.81 m/s2. Also make a plot of speed during the
race. The beginning and end of the race should be identifiable by large negative and
positive acceleration spikes. Hints: the actual event occurs shortly after 220

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seconds and the full data set may be too large for excel. You may want to open the
csv in a notepad or similar program and eliminate some of the unnecessary data.
Other programs like matlab or python should be fine with the large data set. Make
sure all axes are correctly labeled and include units. If using excel to plot x-y data,
only every use the scatter plot, here the straight line scatter plot is good.

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