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electronic circuit[i‚lek′trän·ik ′sər·kət]
An electric circuit in which the equilibrium of electrons in some of the components (such as electron tubes, transistors, or magnetic amplifiers) is upset by means other than an applied voltage.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
circuit(1) See communications channel.
(2) A set of electronic components that perform a particular function in an electronic system. See hardware circuit and integrated circuit.
digital circuitAn electronic circuit that accepts and processes binary data (on/off) according to the rules of Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT, etc.). See chip and Bebop to the Boolean Boogie.
A digital circuit can be conceptualized as a mass of plumbing. The circuit paths are the pipes, the transistors are the valves and the electricity is the water. Imagine opening a valve, and the water that passes through it and down a pipe will eventually reach a second valve, causing it to turn on, allowing water in another pipe to flow through it that reaches another valve, and so on.
A resistor can be viewed as a large pipe that narrows into a smaller pipe, a capacitor as a storage tank and a diode as a one-way valve, allowing water to flow in only one direction.
|From Logic to Plumbing|
|It would be a plumber's worst nightmare to have to follow the maze of pipes (circuits) that are really created in a chip. This simple circuit actually resides in every computer. For more details, see chip.|
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