Lab Report # 10

To measure the voltage gain of an inverting OP-AMP

Theory:
Operational Amplifier (Op Amp or OA for short) is an analog
integrated circuit developed in 1965 by Mr. Robert Widlar at Fairchild
Semiconductors Laboratories. The beauty with this OA is, we work with it
mathematically or almost mathematically.
In terms of construction, OAs are based on transistors' amplification
(mostly FET but there are some built with BJT), and each OA contains few
tens or hundreds of them. However, OA is one functional, complex unit
block, and it has many particular characteristics.
An OA has the following main characteristics:
1. High Voltage Gain, noted with Av, and having 103..109 magnitudes/levels
2. High input impedance; the ideal case is Zi --> ohms (read this as: Input
Impedance tends to reach infinite value)
3. Wide Bandwidth
4. Low output impedance; Zo --> 0 ohm.

OP-AMP as a Summing Amplifier:

The basic summer is shown
below in the diagram. It has a number of inputs through which various
voltages are applied that are supposed to be summed up.
The summer works on the inverting amplifier principal. The output
voltage is equal to the algebraic sum of inputs applied with negative sign. The
negative sign indicates inversion.
The general diagram showing a summer with n inputs is shown below.
If we have each input connected to a different resistor than others then we
get a WEIGHTED SUMMER. The output of which is totally determined on
the values of input resistances.

CIRCUIT SCHEMATICS

Procedure:
I connected the circuit according to the circuit diagram
shown above. A 10V power supply(dual) was provided to each input through a
potentiometers. Multimeters were then employed to find out the values for
the input and output voltage.

Observations and Calculations

V1

V2

VO

+6.26 V

+2.32V

-8.67V

+5.00V

+3.86V

-8.44V

-7.11V

-4.10

+11.21V

Epilogue
Cutting in short, an OP-AMP is a very handy and useful device.
It provides output voltage based on the input provided to it. It can amplify
even a dead signal to a whole new life. But this has its own disadvantages. By
this way it also enhances the noise signals to very large extents. So we use
feedback to counter this