One of the fi rst lessons in a basic electronics coursecovers the symbols for resistors, capacitors, inductors,voltage sources and current sources. Althougheach symbol represents a functional component of areal-world circuit, only some of the symbols have directphysical counterparts. For instance, the three discretepassive devices—resistors, capacitors, inductors—canbe picked off a shelf and placed on a real board muchas their symbolic analogs appear in a basic schematic.Likewise, while voltage sources have no direct 2-terminalanalog, a voltage source can be easily built with an offthe-shelf linear regulator.
