If I could only keep one of my books on electronics, This would be it: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-Scherz/dp/0071452818/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319339386&sr=1"-1 Practical electronics for inventors by Paul Scherz.
It is the "Art of Electronics" for the rest of us normal intelligence folk.
Was just about to post a link to this book... found it yesterday in Blackwell's and its already helped me out twice (Google books preview).
Practical Electronics for Inventors is a nice book, Scherz really tries to explain the concepts as easy as possible. I like his water analogies. Also, lots of practical advice. However, as robrenz has already mentioned, it does contain many errors. It may be useful to print out this errata sheet and consult it frequently while reading the book:
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/ph235/errata.pdfThe number of errors might come as a shock, but I think for a beginner in electronics the advantage of good explanations outweighs the inconvenience of having to check for errors.
Here's two that I've found useful:
http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
I think both are excellent resources (maybe the best free resources on the web) if one is willing to systematically learn electronics, and to invest some time into it. Both do not demand any prior knowledge of electronics and provide very good and understandable explanations.
There is one chapter in allaboutcircuits that I highly recommend to everybody, even if one is only occasionally playing with electronic circuits, and this is the chapter on Electrical Safety:
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/index.htmlCarefully studying it might actually safe your life one day.
Here's a PDF version of the GE Transistor Manual mentioned in The Amp Hour episode #90:
GE - Transistor Manual 1964It's a good read, actually.
Here's a link for India's NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) website.
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/To quote the website...
NPTEL provides E-learning through online Web and Video courses in Engineering, Science and humanities streams. The mission of NPTEL is to enhance the quality of Engineering education in the country by providing free online courseware.
It has pretty much any EE course you can imagine in either video or web format. You'll also find mathematics, computer science and a ton of other courses as well.
I am very new to this forum. In fact this is the first posting. I am also not the best at proper etiquette or spelling. Never the less, I hope i did not miss that this was allready posted in order to prevent redundancy, but I am a big fan of the encyclopedia of electronic circuits series. There are no explanations on how the circuits really work, but there are thousands of circuits in which you can clone, modify and own. Each book is about 1000 pages of nothing but circuits. when you get the chance, you can look into it sometime.
r,
Keith
Hi Guys,
This is my first time posting.
After two courses in basic electronics, I'm reading two books: 1) "All New Electronics Self-Teaching Guide" by Harry Kybett and Earl Boyson. 2) "How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic" by Michael Jay Geier.
They're quite interesting and easy to read. Has anyone read these and/or have any opinions about them?
p.s.: I'm just starting out with minimal gear. I have 4 DMMs of different types, a 100MHz dual trace Tek465B analog scope, a 3 Amp linear PSU and a 200 project Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab. I just got an Elenco transistor/diode tester kit to build. My 12 year old son wants to learn to solder.
Thanks in advance for any feed-back.
PJinLA
Please visit this site:
http://www.cirvirlab.com/It is educational, for electronics study and simulation of most common electronic circuits and it's free.
http://www.ecircuitcenter.com/Circuits.htmMany interesting circuits, together with the corresponding SPICE files, good explanations, and suggestions how to "play" with the simulated circuits to understand their behaviour.
Such a lot of information here!
Here's another I came across recently:
http://jacquesricher.com/NEETS/NEETS - US Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series
24 chapters; each chapter is a single pdf.
I really like AfrotechMods' videos but he hasn't done many recently. I was a fan of his site back in the early 2000's when he was doing videos of hard drive voice coils being used as speakers.