Re: Transistors

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:53:11 -0500, Fred Bloggs <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:07:02 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Hey! This is SED--no fair being helpful!

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs



This is a nice little test to give to applicants for tech or
engineering positions:


+10V
|
|
|
c
+5V--------b
e
|
|
|
1K
|
|
gnd


It's an average NPN transistor.

What's the emitter voltage? Current?

What's the base voltage?

What's the base current?

What's the collector current?

Will anything get hot?

Any other comments?


Some hot-shot resumes have been deflated by this one.

"Engineers" have said...

The base voltage is 0.6

The transistor is saturated, so collector voltage is zero.

The transistor is saturated, so emitter voltage is +10.

I haven't done this in a while, so I don't remember the formulas.

And other weird stuff.

Pitiful.

John




You have no business springing that test on new applicants without
warning to allow sufficient preparation. It also may be racially and/or
gender biased... standby, you will be hearing from my lawyer....

Preparation? To answer a bog-basic circuit question like this? I
couldn't hire a design engineer who wouldn't be able to tell me all
the approximate voltages and currents casually.

How about a voltage divider? Is that unfair to "spring" as well?

A resistor charging a cap is another good resume-deflator.

Last guy I interviewed, we spent a couple of hours at a whiteboard,
doing the first steps of an actual VME module design. After I hired
him, he finished it.

John



.

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