Electronics > Beginners
It's not easy being a beginner........
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vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: Noidzoid on October 14, 2019, 07:32:40 pm ---I was reading Electronics for Dummies last night and thought I would have a browse in the glossary.  Now I was willing to accept everything I read as correct and to soak up the lingo (as I know next to nothing about this subject at the moment), UNTILL I read the following which I KNOW to be false.

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I find this concerning! When trying to learn the technicalities of a new subject being mislead in such a way can make you believe that you'll never get the hang of something and give up when for instance a formula you learned off by heart was incorrect thus never allowing you to achieve the correct answer.

In this instance, imagine telling an engineering student that a hexagon was "squarish". Ok, so now a hexagon has what? Four sides, four corners. I could maybe understand, but only just, if the shape being described was a parallelogram or a rhombus.

Up to this point if the book had stated that a transistor was batteryish I would have read on without knowledge of the nonsense I had been served, until I had learned better later on and maybe wasted valuable time.

What else am I expected to cross reference before I can know that the information I am reading is correct?

OK. Thanks. Rant over....

--- End quote ---
Yeah!
Good to see your BS meter is working well! :bullshit:

The glossary statement was "double dumb"!

"Hex" in the electronics sense, is more likely to refer to "Hexadecimal" or sometimes just "six" as in things like "Hex Inverters"
(I aways felt the  latter device sounds more like something you would need for self defence if you upset a Witch!) ;D

The bit about "high" digital voltage levels is BS, too---- the range of voltages which are read as "ones" or "zeroes" are different for the various types of technogy used to manufacture digital ICs, & normally are included in the device "spec sheet", but a "high" is never just  "any value above zero"!

Edit:- Oops! In my eagerness to get to my "witch" joke, Ialso misled you.:-[
I have added the part in italics to clarify things!
vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: Rigolon on October 14, 2019, 08:30:50 pm ---Well... English is not my first language and definitely not the language I learned electronics.
But in electronics many terms are used in english no matter the language you are learning in.

That being said, I don't think that's the part you should concern. It's Electronics for Dummies and not a book to be used as reference book in a university. Plus hex(allen) it's more linked to mechanics or geometry, if that's the case, instead to electronics. And I think it's easy to understand what they want to say with "squarish". So IMHO it shouldn't be something to fuzz about. Sure, they could just said hexagon instead of squarish, since hexagon is a pretty common thing.

What I would worry more it's about the High Signal. Again, as I did not learn in english, whenever we were talking about high signal, we are talking about the logic state. Specially in digital electronics. And in that case, not all signal higher than 0V is a high signal. In CMOS components, for example, high signal is between 3.3 to 5V (Vcc = 5V). Between 0 and 1.5V it's a low signal. Yet again, this interpretation could be because of the languages differences.

--- End quote ---

It's not a "language thing"-- see my posting!

On another issue, people have said, in effect, "Well, it's for Dummies, you can't expect much".
I have, in passing, read a few "for Dummies" books, & they are mostly better than that.

That said, I remember using recommended Maths books, where the "Answers"section at the rear were full of errors.(& that was in the "golden era" of textbooks).

If the errors in his book freaked the OP out, imagine what it would be like for High School kids where "the book" was virtually "the Word of God"!
Noidzoid:

--- Quote from: Leiothrix on October 14, 2019, 09:16:20 pm ---Eh, it's just humor, I don't get the outrage.

The "for dummies" books are written very informally, I'd imagine there are plenty of similar things in there.

--- End quote ---

My bad obviously.  I did buy a book "for dummies" so why would I expect it to be factual.  If you explain anything to a real dummy it probably wont be understood or appreciated anyway, so why bother making it true if you can amuse yourself at the dummies expense?

I suppose the "humour" of putting a joke book in the educational books section was part of the joke.  |O I know, not getting it proves my dummieness. :-DD

Oh well, live and learn eh? I try to anyway. :-\
RoGeorge:
When it's online info, chances are the material has no peer review, so less trustful.
When it's paper printed, almost sure the material was peer reviewed, so chances are the book is correct, even when it defies common sense.

That's a good reason to search if there are Allen keys with different head profiles.  Turned out square Allen keys exist:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=square+allen+key&iax=images&ia=images
Gyro:

--- Quote from: Noidzoid on October 15, 2019, 05:40:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: Leiothrix on October 14, 2019, 09:16:20 pm ---Eh, it's just humor, I don't get the outrage.

The "for dummies" books are written very informally, I'd imagine there are plenty of similar things in there.

--- End quote ---

My bad obviously.  I did buy a book "for dummies" so why would I expect it to be factual.  If you explain anything to a real dummy it probably wont be understood or appreciated anyway, so why bother making it true if you can amuse yourself at the dummies expense?

I suppose the "humour" of putting a joke book in the educational books section was part of the joke.  |O I know, not getting it proves my dummieness. :-DD

Oh well, live and learn eh? I try to anyway. :-\

--- End quote ---

Stick with it. The start of the learning curve is always the steepest. As you gain traction and start prototyping simple stuff then things will flow much better... until you accidentally stray into something more specialist like high frequency RF, then you realize that you know bugger all again.  :D

This forum is an excellent way of cross checking things. As long as it's clear that you've put in a bit of legwork first, you will find a vast amount of collective engineering experience at your disposal. Don't forget forum search too, it's likely that most basic questions will have been covered at least once before.
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