Faulty Analysis

A way to encourage a student to examine critically what he is reading is to give him a system analysis which contains some fault which leads to a false conclusion. The fault should be rather subtle and can be either a logical error or a bad assumption. Three examples are presented: (1) The magnetic rectifier, a coil which produces a dc component in the current when an ac voltage is applied. (2) The signal-to-noise ratio amplifier, a circuit for a communication receiver which improves the signal-to-noise ratio by 3 db. (3) A single-phase-to-three-phase converter, a device which produces a three-phase output with a single-phase input voltage.