What is the gravitational constant?

Check your knowledge about how ESD can ruin your day.

If there ever was a silent killer for electronic devices, it's ESD (electrostatic discharge). A little zap from a finger, a charged metallic part, or an IC tray can cause an inrush of current that can damage sensitive IC. Trust me, for I know. When replacing a hard drive on a computer some years ago, I powered it and found that nothing happened other than the power supply turning on. A discharge I couldn't feel was enough to kill the PC's motherboard. Since then I always wear charge-dissipating wrist straps when working on a computer. By the way, did you know that wrist straps decompose over time?

This week's quiz questions come from several papers that you can find at Techonline:

1. Why should ESD protection devices have minimal capacitance, preferably less than 0.5 pF?

1. Too much capacitance will pull down power rails.
2. Capacitance causes excessing EMI emissions.
3. Capacitance reduces ESD protection.
4. Too much capacitance on data lines can distort signals.