The paper presents a tutorial on the properties of the memristor, a new ideal circuit element that relates charge and magnetic flux. The existence of the memristor was predicted in 1971 based on symmetry arguments but was experimentally demonstrated in 2008. The authors discuss the properties of a single memristor, memristors in series and parallel, and ideal memristor-capacitor (MC), memristor-inductor (ML), and memristor-capacitor-inductor (MCL) circuits. They find that the memristor has hysteretic current-voltage characteristics and that ideal MC and ML circuits exhibit non-exponential charge and current decay with two time scales. The paper also explores the behavior of an ideal MCL circuit, which can be tuned from overdamped to underdamped by switching the polarity of the capacitor. The authors present simple models to explain these unusual properties and conclude with a discussion on the pedagogical significance of the memristor in electrical circuit theory.The paper presents a tutorial on the properties of the memristor, a new ideal circuit element that relates charge and magnetic flux. The existence of the memristor was predicted in 1971 based on symmetry arguments but was experimentally demonstrated in 2008. The authors discuss the properties of a single memristor, memristors in series and parallel, and ideal memristor-capacitor (MC), memristor-inductor (ML), and memristor-capacitor-inductor (MCL) circuits. They find that the memristor has hysteretic current-voltage characteristics and that ideal MC and ML circuits exhibit non-exponential charge and current decay with two time scales. The paper also explores the behavior of an ideal MCL circuit, which can be tuned from overdamped to underdamped by switching the polarity of the capacitor. The authors present simple models to explain these unusual properties and conclude with a discussion on the pedagogical significance of the memristor in electrical circuit theory.