IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Summer 2016 - 91

She has been an SSCS member since
engineering. The program started in
it became a Society in the early 1990s.
Dallas's inner-city high schools, and
She is a member of the Women in Enthis year it expanded to Fort Worth,
gineering Committee as the Society
Austin, and Houston.
liaison for SSCS. This year, Wanda and
Wanda says, "The one thing I love
her team are working on ways to get
about the program is when the students
more female members
struggle to learn a new
involved in volunteer
concept. I like seeing
opportunities with the
the excitement in their
Wanda's current
Society and planning
faces when they reach
role is president
more activities for
that 'ah ha' moment,
of Design
women at upcoming
when the light bulb
Connect Create,
conferences. "We want
comes on."
a nonprofit that
to get a baseline of feShe says one of the
offers physics
male participation in
most satisfying parts
camps to young
Chapter activities, conof the program is seewomen prior to
ferences, and publicaing the girls excel. "The
their first physics
tions for our Society
most rewarding part
class in high
members," she says.
of my job is seeing the
school.
Wanda's current role
camp participants do
is president of Design
better in pre-AP physConnect Create, a nonprofit that ofics and AP physics after they have
fers physics camps to young women
participated in the camp or when the
prior to their first physics class in
girls that go on to major in engineering
high school. Design Connect Create
come back to the camp during college
strives to give women the confidence
to be a teacher's assistant."
and preparation to be successful in
Prior to her role at Design Conphysics, which is a gateway course to
nect Create, she was the executive

C irCu iT inTu iTions

director at High-Tech High Heels, a
nonprofit with the mission of closing
the gender gap in STEM through programs that inspire young women in
high school to pursue STEM degrees
in college.
Outside of work, Wanda likes to
run, do yoga, and spend time at the
beach. Every summer, her family goes
to the beach in Texas with five other
families of close college friends. They
spend a week building sand sculptures
each day, to the amazement of many
on the beach.
"It's surprising what happens when
you get lots of engineers working on
sand castles," she says.
-Abira Sengupta

If you have suggestions regarding SSCS's
Women in Engineering initiative, please
e-mail Wanda at wandakgass@gmail.com.

(continued from p. 8)

zero to VDD /2, and we keep it at this
level until the capacitor is charged
to VDD /2. Then we raise it further to
VDD in the second step. In this way,
the total energy stored at the end of
the second step would be the same
as before, but the total energy wasted
becomes (1/4) CV 2DD, which is half of
the total energy stored. If we ramp the
power supply in N steps instead, the
total energy stored will be the same
as before but the total energy wasted
becomes 1/N of (1/2) CV 2DD . If we
assume it takes 5RC to charge the
capacitor when the power supply is
set to VDD in one step, then it will take

5NRC when we ramp the power supply in N steps. As we increase N, the
wasted energy will approach zero but
the time it takes to charge the capacitor will approach infinity.
In closing, it should be mentioned
that, like any analogy, this one is not
without limitations. For example, this
analogy is only valid if we assume one
side of the capacitor is grounded or
tied to a fixed voltage. This is because
we assume the bottom of a glass sits
on the ground or at a fixed height.
Also, unlike an ideal capacitor, which is
a loss-less lumped element, the glass
is a distributed component with both

lossless and lossy components. The
glass walls, for example, absorb some
of the water's kinetic energy, acting
similar to a series resistance in the
RC circuit. In other words, the glass
would be a better analogy for a series
RC circuit than for an ideal capacitor.
To summarize, analogies are powerful tools in the early stages of understanding of less tangible concepts. We
described one analogy for capacitors in
this article in an attempt to make them
as tangible, and enjoyable, as a glass of
water. We will further explore this analogy in the next article in this series.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

Su m m e r 2 0 16

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Summer 2016