Practical Electronics: Components and Techniques

Glossary

The terms and abbreviations defined in this glossary are representative of what you will typically encounter when working with electronics. This collection does not include specialized terms such as charge carrier, band-gap, or stripline, as these don’t often come up unless you are working with semiconductor design or high-frequency microwave circuits, and those topics are well outside the scope of this book.

In some cases, when a term might be open to more than one interpretation, abbreviations in parentheses indicate the primary subject reference. For example, annular ring refers to a feature found in a PCB layout, not to the foam ring found in a high-end loudspeaker within a stereo system. The definition includes PCB in parentheses to indicate this distinction. If the abbreviation SMD appears, this means the definition refers to a surface-mount device. In other cases, the abbreviation commonly used with a particular term being defined is shown in parentheses, such as in the definition of liquid crystal display (LCD).

A/D converter

See analog-to-digital converter.

AC

See alternating current.

accelerometer

A sensor (or transducer) for detecting and measuring acceleration.

ADC

See analog-to-digital converter.

additive process

A PCB fabrication process wherein the circuit pattern is produced by the addition of metal to a specially treated substrate. It is the opposite of the etching method used in a subtractive process.

Ah

See ampere-hour.

alternating current ...