Electronics course books that aren't AoE student manual / learning the art? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SingedFingers
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 09:02:53 pm
content: I have a friend, an economist, who is rather disheartened with his job and wants to learn about the large pile of things populating my lab corner of the living room. He wants to actually sit down with a book and learn everything and work through something in a logical fashion with guidance. He already owns Practical Electronics for Inventors but it's devoid of hand holding and direction and more suitable as a reference.Personally I went through the Art of Electronics student manual in the distant past, then skipped through an EE degree, then left the whole shebang behind to get paid more in the IT sector. I've scanned through the Learning the Art of Electronics edition of the book that recently dropped and I'm going to be honest, and this might sting a bit, I really can't recommend it. While technically a good book, it has many brick walls in it that limits it to academic use only. I'm going to list a few which are relevant to my point:1. It has a quite extensive and obscure equipment requirements. That PB503/505 is a killer for example as a chunk of the book is built around having that, or two function generators handy, debounced switches and indicators.2. The parts lists are expensive. Really expensive.3. The digital section is way too vendor tied when it gets to the SiLabs stuff. I couldn't afford to do the 68008 section of the new book but you should be able to get as far with an AVR or PIC these days and low dev kit expenditure (not a Harvard supplied $150 keyboard module for example)4. There is a massive problem with parts being region specific. For example some of the parts required aren't shippable to EU without incurring a large cost or ordering a massive minimum cost. That means that you can't run it in monthly installments etc.I can see these being a brick wall if I'm honest.I did consider giving him my 2nd edition book but I scanned the parts list and it's full of obsolete stuff that is expensive and difficult to obtain. Again this is a big problem.So the question, after this minor rant is:Are there any books that aren't the ones listed above that give a good end to end course in electronics which have practical involvement?Edit: I have considered suggestion "The Electronics of Radio" by David Rutledge.

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 09:31:16 pm
content: 2 textbooks which I picked up after seeing them recommended on the net were:1. Grob's Basic Electronics 12th edition by Mitchel E Schultz, McGraw Hill International2. Introduction to Electronics 6th edition by Earl Gates, Delmar Cengage LearningNo. 2 is too brief for me - not enough maths for a solid understanding, maybe ok for familiarising yourself with terms in later chapters (but still not enough details on them, requiring you to seek further information anyways).For a very solid fundamental understanding of circuits with mathematics, no. 1 is a better choice. It is over 1200 pages, so would be suitable for a serious student who wants to "do it properly" from scratch. It mainly describes current in terms of electron flow, and unit of measurement are mixed between imperial and metric. The only points where it left me wanting more information required me to go seek out physics or mathematics resources, so the level of detail is probably right for an electronics book.

author: SingedFingers
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 10:19:35 pm
content: Thanks for the suggestions. Will review those tomorrow.

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 11:07:35 pm
content: Oh and while he's at it, it would be a good idea to revise basic precalculus and calculus concepts.