watt - Unit of electrical power required to do work at the rate of one joule per second. One watt of power is expended when one ampere of direct current flows through a resistance of one ohm. In an AC circuit, true power is the product of effective volts and effective amperes, multiplied by the power factor.
wattage rating - Maximum power a device can safely handle continuously.
watt-hour - Unit of electrical work, equal to a power of one watt being absorbed for one hour.
wattmeter - Instrument used to measure electric power in watts.
wave - Electric, electromagnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other form whose physical activity rises and falls or advances and retreats periodically as it travels through some medium.
waveform - Shape of a wave.
waveguide - Rectangular or circular pipe used to guide electromagnetic waves at micro frequencies.
wavelength - (l) Distance between two points of corresponding phase and is equal to waveform velocity divided by frequency.
weber - (Wb) Unit of magnetic flux. One weber is the amount of flux that when linked with a single turn of wire for an interval of one second will induce an electromotive force of one volt.
wien-bridge oscillator - Oscillator that uses an RC low-pass filter and an RC high-pass filter to set the
frequency of oscillations.
wet cell - Secondary cell using a liquid as an electrolyte.
wetting - Term used in soldering to describe the condition that occurs when the metals being soldered are hot enough to melt the solder so it flows over the surface.
wheatstone bridge - Four arm bridge circuit used to measure resistance, inductance or capacitance.
wideband amplifier - Also called "broadband amplifier." Amplifier with a flat response over a wide range of frequencies.
winding - One or more turns of a conductor wound in the form of a coil.
wire - Single solid or stranded group of conductors having a low resistance to current flow. Used to make connections between circuits or points in a circuit.
wire gauge - American wire gauge (AWG) is a system of numerical designations of wire diameters.
wireless - Term describing radio communication that requires no wired between two communicating points.
wire wound resistor - Resistor in which the resistive element is a length of high resistance wire or ribbon usually nichrome wound onto an insulating form.
wire wrapping - Method of making a connection by wrapping wire around a rectangular pin.
woofer - Large loudspeaker designed primarily to reproduce low frequency audio signals.
work - Work is done any time energy is transformed from one type to another. The amount of work done is dependent on the amount of energy transformed. |