W. Marshall Leach, Jr., Professor Georgia Institute of Technology School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0250 Telefax: (404) 894 4641
Spring 2007 ECE Picnic - I received the Outstanding Senior Professor Award.

Letters of Recommendation

If you are an undergraduate student who wishes for me to write a letter of recommendation for admission to graduate school or for a fellowship, please read this.

Courses That I Teach

ECE3050 Analog Electronics

ECE4435 Op Amp Design

ECE4445 Audio Engineering*

ECE6416 Low Noise Electronic Design*

ECE3040 Microelectronic Circuits

ECE4391 Electromagnetic Compatibility

My Biosketch

You can read my "official" school biographical information here.

So You Want to be an Engineer

This is from an email I received from a former student. It is interesting reading.

Another comment from a former student on his life as an engineer.

Selected Publications

You can see some of the papers that I have published in refereed journals here. The papers with links have been posted because of email requests that I have received.

Audio Related Things

Click here to see a collection of things related to audio amplifiers and speakers. Included are some articles and papers that I wrote and some loudspeaker projects that students built.

Some Information Links

• Evaluation version of AIM Spice. This evaluation version lets you have 20 active devices and 50 nodes in a circuit.
• Linear Technology software page. You will love the version of SPICE they have for free. It appears to have no limits and has a graphical interface.
• Greg's Download Page - A wealth of free software for electronics projects.
• ECAD List - Another wealth of free software for electronics projects.
• Dr. Leach's Filter Potpourri. This is a PDF document which might take several minutes to download. I recommend right clicking on the link and saving it to your hard disk.
• The reverse Polish algorithm for Hewlett Packard calculators.
• Atlanta Area Radio.
• Superposition of Dependent Sources is Valid in Circuit Analysis. This paper was originally submitted to the IEEE Trans. on Education in early 1994. It was rejected because the reviewer was of the opinion that the methods it described were not valid. A request to have it reviewed again by a competent reviewer went unanswered. It was then submitted to the IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems in 1995. The reviewers recommended several changes. The paper was revised and submitted a second time in 1996. The reviewers then recommended that it be submitted instead to the IEEE Trans. on Education. It was submitted again to that journal. The editor rejected the paper without having it peer reviewed. The paper has been published on the internet since late 1996. I have received many emails from people who have found it useful. One came from an author of a circuits textbook who said that it taught him some new tricks.

My Weird Science Picks

Some science is weird and some science is not weird. I am entertained by weird science. You can see some of my picks here.

Some of My Nostalgic Pictures of Abbeville, SC

If you grew up in the city of Abbeville, SC during the time that I did, you might recognize some of the people in the pictures on this page.

Some Pictures from my three years in the US Air Force

I served as an officer in the Air Force at McClellan AFB in Sacramento, CA in '65 through '67. I worked in McClellan Central Laboratory (MCL) in the 1155th Technical Operations Squadron (1155th TOS). Our squadron was a member of the elite AFTAC organization, which has been described as one of the ten greatest secrets of the Cold War. You can see some pictures I made made here.

Other Links

If a frequency exhibits resonance, it can properly be called a resonant frequency. Can a frequency of resonance be called a resonant frequency? You can read what Harvard's famous acoustician F. V. Hunt had to say about this here. For a weird science definition of resonance, you can read Tom Bearden's definition here.

Making the Grade, by Georgia Tech Physics Professor Kurt Wiesenfeld. Kurt describes his frustrating experiences with students who assume they have the authority to assign their own grades. You can read a student's response here.

Physics 101 Exam. This is a final exam in a senior level physics course taught by Dr. Ronald Edge that I took when I was a student at the University of South Carolina. It was a three hour exam, closed notes and closed book. Each problem consists of two parts, one a derivation and the second a calculation. I would be interested in knowing if the quizzes students take today are as easy as this one.

Phi Kappa Sigma - Alpha Eta Old School

Dr. Brewer's Video

Back in the spring semester of 2007, a performer known as T. I. performed across from the Van Leer ECE building. The sound technicians were setting up the high-power system during Dr. Brewer's ECE 3042 class. The class was held in the Van Leer Auditorium directly across from the venue. A student recorded this video that shows Dr. Brewer's response to one of the sound technician's tests. Dr. Brewer doesn't miss a beat during his lecture.

Ohm's Law

Every semester in my courses I have students who think that Ohm's Law is V = I/R when it should be V = IR. This short video reviews Ohm's Law and gives a neat triangle rule for remembering it if you don't have it in your calculator or on your formula sheet.

This page is not a publication of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology has not edited or examined the content. The author of this page is solely responsible for the content. Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.