Stuff that blew my mind

[saturated]

A zener diode can act like a normal diode when it is forward biased

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Seems kinda obvious now that I think about it.

  

[g1]

The 'original' zener was just a defective regular diode.  Someone very smart realized it could be controlled and utilized.  Like a lot of discoveries, I guess. 
Always analyze your mistakes. 

[saturated]

Thanks guys
I'm gonna use this thread to post stuff that I was surprised to learn.

Like how a dc power supply is a ground to ac.

 

[J M Fahey]

The 'original' zener was just a defective regular diode.  Someone very smart realized it could be controlled and utilized.  Like a lot of discoveries, I guess. 
Always analyze your mistakes. 

Hey, Penicillin came out of moldy bread 

First Vaccin (smallpox) came out of a rural Doctor noticing that girls milking cows caught a "light" version of Smallpox, including (small) scars, but never ever got the "real" one.

Observation and deduction is everything.

May remember wrong, but Zeners came out of WAY overdoped regular diodes.

[saturated]

Something else I found to be interesting 

Working out of one of my old books

Look at this diagram

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They said the voltage at the base and emitter were the same. 


Then pointed out the ratio of each voltage divider being....the same 

Which...some simple math would have pointed out.


 

[g1]

That seems a bit of over simplification as there are still parallel paths through the transistor.
They may have found them to be insignificant in this example, but I think they should have at least mentioned them being possible factors.

[Tassieviking]

I find it fascinating that Saturated has decided to self learn all the theory the hard way, I am very impressed that he is sticking to it the way he is, it would be hard for most people with no teacher to explain what is going on.
Great work saturated, keep it up and keep surprising us with your progress.

Cheers
Mick

[saturated]

Thanks that's very kind and means a lot to me  but it's you guy's help that keeps me going and for that I'm always grateful so I try to tread lightly and not muck up the heavy lifting that takes place here.