Linear Circuit Analysis is a core course in electrical engineering that most undergraduate students need to take in the first year of their program. In fact, the course covers topics that are so fundamental that, most often, students from other engineering areas such as computer, industrial, power, or manufacturing engineering also need to take it as an introduction to electrical engineering.

This webbook is designed to be used by students to learn linear circuits while solving problems on the CircuitsU website; instructors can use the website to teach linear circuits without the need for other textbooks. This webbook and the problems generated by CircuitsU, cover most topics in the Linear Circuit Analysis course taught in undergraduate programs in the U.S. and is organized relatively similar to the existing textbooks on linear circuits.

The webbook is slightly different from other books or materials in linear circuits that you can find online. First, the webbook is written in a concise manner to help students spend a minimum amount of time learning the different topics on linear circuits so they can spend more time practicing problems on their own. For this reason, just browsing the pages of the webbook might not be sufficient to master all the topics in linear circuits (as a regular textbook would). Students should first review the Examples of Solved Problems sections that appear at the end of most sections and then practice using the Practice Problems sections.

Second, the problems and examples that appear at the end of each section are generated randomly when the page is loaded, so students can look over and practice as many problems as they want. Due to the relatively large computational cost required to generate random problems, you need to be logged in order to take advantage of the full set of examples and problems at the end of the sections.

Have fun!

CircuitsU is an interactive instructional platform designed to help students learn and practice linear circuit analysis. It provides circuit-based problems, visual schematics, structured answer input, and immediate feedback so that students can strengthen their understanding of fundamental concepts such as Ohm’s law, Kirchhoff’s laws, equivalent resistance, voltage and current division, nodal analysis, mesh analysis, power, and transient behavior in linear circuits. The goal is to give students repeated, guided practice in applying the methods taught in a linear circuits course.

CircuitsU is built primarily as a teaching and learning tool rather than as a professional circuit simulation package. It helps instructors create and assign problems, allows students to interact with circuit diagrams, and supports automated checking of answers and reasoning steps. By combining visual circuit representations with immediate feedback, CircuitsU is intended to help students develop both computational skill and physical intuition about how circuits behave.

CircuitsU is not intended to be another SPICE simulator. It is limited to linear circuit components and does not currently include nonlinear devices such as diodes or transistors. Its purpose is not to help students or professionals perform detailed circuit simulations, but rather to support the teaching and learning of linear circuits by providing interactive practice, guided problem solving, and immediate feedback.