There exists a real need for solid courses in analog and digital electronics at the undergraduate level in four year institutions. A course in analog electronics is an excellent laboratory experience. Beyond this general appeal, physics majors who intend to find industrial positions will be well served if they have a good understanding of electronics. For those students of physics (and increasingly chemistry) who go on to graduate school, good preparation in analog electronics is important in research laboratories where such knowledge is taken for granted. All of the above can be said for digital electronics, which, in addition, is required for substantial numbers of students taking a computer science major. To teach these classes well, every two students should have at their disposal five major pieces of equipment: a dual trace oscilloscope, a good function generator, a D.C. power supply, a frequency counter and, for more sophisticated digital circuits, a logic analyzer. In the past, each of these would be physically separate instruments. Ripon is integrating four of them (all but the power supply) by acquiring plug in boards for IBM ATs. This will reduce the cost and, more importantly, it will allow digital processing of the waveforms (principally Fourier Analysis) resulting in an increased ability to do quantitative analyses of experiments. The college is matching the award with an equal amount of funds.//
