As already implied, an IC op amp is made up of a large number of transistors, resistors, and(usually) one capacitor connected in a rather complex circuit. Sing we have not yet studied transistor circuits, the circuit inside the op amp will not be discussed in this chapter Rather, we will treat the op amp as a circuit building block and study ist terminal charac- terisics and its applications. This approach is quite satisfactory in many op-amp applica-tions. Nevertheless, for the more difficult and demanding applications it is quite useful to know what is inside the op-amp package. This topic will be studied in Chapter 10. Finally, it should be mentioned that more advanced applications of op amps will appear in later chapters