EC ENGR 10H
Circuit Theory I (Honors)
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour; outside study, seven hours. Requisites: course 3 (or Computer Science 1 or Materials Science 10), Mathematics 33A, Physics 1B. Corequisites: course 11L (enforced only for Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering majors), Mathematics 33B. Honors course parallel to course 10. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Very engaging lectures. Prof. Abidi explains the material with tons of passion and got me excited about circuits. He emphasizes approaching the problem and thinking about circuits correctly. His midterm had a very high average, but the test definitely makes you think and teaches you. Since some of his work is in coupled inductors, he emphasizes ideal/nonideal transformers, which I don't think you will get in any other class. Though he can seem a bit intimidating, he bears a wealth of knowledge that he is willing to share. His 11L lab section lectures are also amazing. The final is pretty difficult, since he probes deeper to see what you know. He grades everything by himself, and grades based upon what your thinking is.
Fall 2019 - Very engaging lectures. Prof. Abidi explains the material with tons of passion and got me excited about circuits. He emphasizes approaching the problem and thinking about circuits correctly. His midterm had a very high average, but the test definitely makes you think and teaches you. Since some of his work is in coupled inductors, he emphasizes ideal/nonideal transformers, which I don't think you will get in any other class. Though he can seem a bit intimidating, he bears a wealth of knowledge that he is willing to share. His 11L lab section lectures are also amazing. The final is pretty difficult, since he probes deeper to see what you know. He grades everything by himself, and grades based upon what your thinking is.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - I really enjoyed taking 10H with Darabi: this class really made me appreciate circuits and further developed my intuition for them. Some of the content was review from ECE 3 or Physics 1B -- we only get to 2nd-order circuits, and the course largely works with resistors, capacitors, and inductors as its 3 main components. However, the intuition and depth the course introduced with just these 3 fundamental components went far beyond what was covered in the previous 2 courses. On this note, Darabi the lecturer must be given his due credit. He has a way of framing circuits that simultaneously generalizes its properties so as to give a broad, eagle-eye view whilst also detailing it with precision. He doesn't hand-wave out exceptions. For example, he defined a resistor as "any component in which a graph can be drawn with its voltage on one axis and its current on the other." In this way, a diode can be classified as a resistor. Resistors which do not "obey" Ohm's Law exactly are also classified as resistors. He does this with all other topics introduced as well. Though the class mostly concerns itself with LTI circuits and consequently LTI components, rendering this fact a miniscule portion of the course, this introduction to resistors allows for a more broad-eyed view on circuits, perhaps as a precursor of what is to follow in proceeding courses, which I greatly appreciated. The workload was manageable. We had overall 4 homework sets throughout the quarter, each spaced around 2-3 weeks apart, and only one midterm along. The first homework is significantly less time-consuming than the others, taking roughly 2-3 hours to complete. The other homeworks roughly average around 6-12 hours each, each homework set taking more time than the previous to complete. Each homework set consists of approximately 8 or 9 questions, with typically 3 of them being extra credit. I found these problems quite tricky, especially at first in Homework 2 when the circuits became more complex than what I was used to in previous courses, but they were quite fun as well and required you to be a little clever, which is sometimes enjoyable. Eventually though the problems do give you repetitive practice and your abilities for solving them grow. You will find that most circuits are simply 1st/2nd order differential equations and most circuit analysis techniques are simply clever ways to describe circuits as systems of differential equations in as convenient a manner as possible. By Homeworks 3 and 4 I felt as though I was doing Math 33B work. It is time-consuming, but most of the cleverness goes into the beginning 10% of the problem when you are identifying what to best focus on writing into equation, and the rest of the 90% is the laboriousness of solving the differential equation. The midterm and final were much easier than the homeworks, around 75% of the difficulty (although I didn't take into account the fact that I was much more experienced doing the final than I was in the homeworks leading up to it). Class performance was reportedly great, with many students receiving perfect scores on the midterm. Overall it was a great class, and I'd highly recommend it.
Fall 2025 - I really enjoyed taking 10H with Darabi: this class really made me appreciate circuits and further developed my intuition for them. Some of the content was review from ECE 3 or Physics 1B -- we only get to 2nd-order circuits, and the course largely works with resistors, capacitors, and inductors as its 3 main components. However, the intuition and depth the course introduced with just these 3 fundamental components went far beyond what was covered in the previous 2 courses. On this note, Darabi the lecturer must be given his due credit. He has a way of framing circuits that simultaneously generalizes its properties so as to give a broad, eagle-eye view whilst also detailing it with precision. He doesn't hand-wave out exceptions. For example, he defined a resistor as "any component in which a graph can be drawn with its voltage on one axis and its current on the other." In this way, a diode can be classified as a resistor. Resistors which do not "obey" Ohm's Law exactly are also classified as resistors. He does this with all other topics introduced as well. Though the class mostly concerns itself with LTI circuits and consequently LTI components, rendering this fact a miniscule portion of the course, this introduction to resistors allows for a more broad-eyed view on circuits, perhaps as a precursor of what is to follow in proceeding courses, which I greatly appreciated. The workload was manageable. We had overall 4 homework sets throughout the quarter, each spaced around 2-3 weeks apart, and only one midterm along. The first homework is significantly less time-consuming than the others, taking roughly 2-3 hours to complete. The other homeworks roughly average around 6-12 hours each, each homework set taking more time than the previous to complete. Each homework set consists of approximately 8 or 9 questions, with typically 3 of them being extra credit. I found these problems quite tricky, especially at first in Homework 2 when the circuits became more complex than what I was used to in previous courses, but they were quite fun as well and required you to be a little clever, which is sometimes enjoyable. Eventually though the problems do give you repetitive practice and your abilities for solving them grow. You will find that most circuits are simply 1st/2nd order differential equations and most circuit analysis techniques are simply clever ways to describe circuits as systems of differential equations in as convenient a manner as possible. By Homeworks 3 and 4 I felt as though I was doing Math 33B work. It is time-consuming, but most of the cleverness goes into the beginning 10% of the problem when you are identifying what to best focus on writing into equation, and the rest of the 90% is the laboriousness of solving the differential equation. The midterm and final were much easier than the homeworks, around 75% of the difficulty (although I didn't take into account the fact that I was much more experienced doing the final than I was in the homeworks leading up to it). Class performance was reportedly great, with many students receiving perfect scores on the midterm. Overall it was a great class, and I'd highly recommend it.
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