The design of an audio power amplifier as a class project for undergraduate students

This paper presents the design of an audio power amplifier as a class project for undergraduate students of electrical engineering. This project is part of an electronics introduction class for undergraduate students and it has two main objectives: first to teach basic electronic circuit design concepts and second to motivate the students into choosing to learn more about analog circuit design. One of the main reasons for the creation of this project was the realization that most students considered analog design uninteresting. This project allows the students to design and build a circuit that actually has a practical application: at the end of the project the students can use the circuit that they designed to listen to music from an mp3 player through a loudspeaker.