Circuit Idea/In the world of simulations

(This is a personal story written by Circuit-fantasist)

The prerequisites

For many years, I avoided using circuit simulation programs. I believed they would hinder my creative thinking. Instead, I preferred to visualize circuit operations using my imagination, intuition, and practical experience gained through real experiments. I often joked that "my brain was my simulator."

My concerns about simulators were that they were often cumbersome, inaccurate, and required significant expertise to use effectively. I doubted the reliability of their results. I believed simulations were better suited for formal, logical thinkers with a strong mathematical background, rather than practical technicians.

I am unsure if this was a personal preference or a general trend, but I was always surrounded by such people. They were intelligent and knowledgeable, but lacked a practical understanding of circuits. To them, circuits were a given, like a divine creation, needing only to be analyzed mathematically and passed on to students.

At my institution, my colleagues primarily used simulations to give their publications a (pseudo)scientific appearance, rather than to gain a deeper understanding of circuit behavior.

How I explored circuits

While I have dedicated my professional life to teaching, my innate passion lies in engineering and invention. As you will discover in my bio, I possess a unique ability to visualize the inner workings of electrical and electronic circuits. Unlike many, I don't rely solely on mental calculations; instead, I mentally project the invisible electrical quantities (voltage, current, and resistance) onto a vivid mental canvas. To me, electronic components (diodes, transistors, and op-amps) are akin to living entities. Understanding them involves a deep empathy, placing myself in their shoes and imagining their behavior. To validate my intuitions, I often conduct simple experiments with unconventional devices and setups in my lab. Until last year, this approach had served me well...

The change

... but circumstances changed... I no longer had a dedicated laboratory for conducting experiments, and setting up a 'home lab' was beyond my budget. The problem was that I could not easily purchase components or materials and make spontaneous changes during experiments. My goal is not to build devices for personal use, but to experiment with circuits, understand their workings, and share my findings online.

CircuitLab

At the beginning of last year, I impulsively started using the CircuitLab simulator, initially as a joke. To my surprise, I was immediately captivated by its graphical editor and the simulator itself. I felt like I had a virtual lab, albeit not a real one. The simulator's ease of use was a game-changer. Elements were large, intuitive to move, and could be connected with ease. The diagrams were streamlined, allowing me to stack them like Lego blocks.

A significant advantage of using a simulation tool is the ability to conduct experiments effortlessly. I did not need highly specific components; conceptual elements with adjustable properties were sufficient. For instance, I could create a diode with a desired threshold voltage by using an "ideal diode" from the CircuitLab library and setting its forward voltage drop in the parameters panel. This flexibility made the simulator a perfect fit for my conceptual approach to circuits. Unlike real-world experiments, the goal here wasn't to create a functional device but to understand the underlying concepts and explain them to others.

In the past, I relied heavily on resources with detailed, hand-drawn illustrations. However, I gradually shifted towards using CircuitLab to visualize circuits. While I still use arrows to represent currents, I haven't yet figured out the best way to visualize voltages. One of the greatest benefits of using this simulator is the validation it provides for my ideas. The numerical and graphical results obtained through simulations lend credibility to my explanations.

With CircuitLab, I can organize my schematics effectively and create step-by-step scenarios. I find it enjoyable to start with a complex circuit and gradually simplify it by removing elements. This process brings me great satisfaction, something I haven't experienced in a long time. Unlike working with real circuits, which can be tedious and time-consuming, the simulator allows me to focus on the concepts without getting bogged down in practicalities.

Although I use the simulator to create artificial models of electronic elements, I sometimes forget that it's not a real circuit. My practical experience helps me maintain a realistic perspective. Unlike beginners who may rely solely on simulations, I believe that a combination of practical experience and simulation is essential for truly understanding circuits. It's like a writer using their life experiences to create fictional scenarios.

CircuitLab tricks

My innate creativity led me to start brainstorming ingenious solutions. The simulator provided a more accessible environment for testing these concepts compared to reality.

Tuning values

My approach involves adjusting values through a process I call "feedback," which means observing an indicator and making adjustments accordingly. This eliminates the need for complex calculations, as I can simply "add" the value directly. In essence, CircuitLab has liberated me from the constraints of equations.

Intentionally imperfect meters

Ideally, an ammeter has zero resistance, and a voltmeter has infinite resistance. A clever trick is to intentionally introduce some resistance into these meters. This allows us to observe how their internal resistance affects measurements and even utilize them as resistors. This is one way to simplify circuit diagrams. ... and many other techniques are explained in My CircuitLab's collection of tricks.