When I was a teen, I applied to be an ATT lineman. At that time at least, they sent you a giant study guide that has everything one might want to know about electricity. I was actually blown away by the material.
I've since lost it, but wonder if it exists on the Internet somewhere. My cursory search didn't return anything.
This page lists several ATT publications and has a link to a 1953 publication that could fit your description (and could have been a subsequent editini).
Otherwise, maybe you'd recognize the name as one of the other publications?
Nice! I browsed through the 1953 edition quickly, and it's very similar. So probably some updated version of that.
I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying. This would have been before the internet was big, so probably isn't as exciting now.
As a very young boy in the 1950s or 60s, I bought a new flavor of Life Savers candy and enjoyed this new flavor so much I wrote the company complimenting them on the great flavor. Some time later, they sent me a box containing all their flavors of Life Savers.
Not the same thing but a comment on what things were like back in the day.
For comparison, last year I was eating a packaged slice of ham and bit something hard, a rock or bone or something. Didn't hurt me or anything, but still odd. It was small and white, but could have been anything. I threw it out.
Later that day I wrote the company just to let them know, thinking if others had similar issues they could investigate.
They wrote me back saying it's impossible their packs would have bones in them, and it's possible my own tooth broke/chipped and that's what I was biting, and attached a coupon for something like 35 cents off one pack.
I found the reply to be really bizarre - I'd probably rather they not responded at all.
Funnily enough, I have indeed have had part of a tooth (an impacted wisdom tooth) come off when eationg something, and was kind of grossed out that my food could contain this small white hard stone-like thing... until later that day I realized I was missing a part of a tooth.
Actually, it's happened twice, as about 15 years after that I had a bad cavity and fracture in a forward molar, and a few days before a scheduled root canal it happened again, but this time I suspected what had happened as soon as I encountered something hard all of a sudden while chewing something that shouldn't really have bits as hard as that in it.
Which is to say, their response that perhaps it was your own tooth may not have been as out of left field as you might have thought. It's probably a somewhat common occurrence.
Which is why I mentioned the AA mirror. There's another copy of the 1961 edition on IA (without the _a3j0 suffix) that can has borrowing enabled, so all pages should be accessible. Both are mirrored on AA.
> I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying.
It was a hangover from their days a quasi-socialist, monopolistic enterprise ("We're the Phone Company"), when they could afford to be "inefficient" in that way -- scare quotes because it's difficult to calculate the cost of preparation and dissemination against all the high-value careers the material may have inspired. These days, an accountant would glance at the cost and cut it out without thinking twice.
These days the cost would be funded by money printing, and there is no need to train because that is the job of university even when they don't actually train people.
Hear hear! I'm currently learning DIY synths from that very channel too, currently on episode 3, very good videos for laymen. Although some extra resources are needed if you want to have further understanding, as he doesn't go too deep into theory, but for being video instructions/tutorials, I find that the balance is good on that.
I learned from the 1st edition, in 1984. It's worth noting that the book was actually written for scientists rather than engineers. I was a math and physics major. By a long standing tradition, an electronics course is a standard part of the undergrad physics curriculum.
My dad had "Electronics for Scientists" by Malmstadt et al., 1962. His employer put a bunch of scientists through an electronics course.
The contrast was pretty remarkable. It's all about vacuum tubes, with some introduction of transistors. The 1st edition of AoE had a reasonable amount of material on digital circuits for back then, but I imagine a similar contrast between 1984 and today.
The span of 40+ years has certainly changed how I do electronics.
I volunteer at an animal shelter. A few months ago, while entering kitten weights into a database, I looked at the bookshelf above the desk I was sitting at. The first book I saw was “How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety.”
i don't recommend this book at all. I know nothing about electronics. Think blank slate and this book went straight over my head. I caught it from the comments of one such post on HN
AoE is not meant for people who are starting from zero. Pair it with some other
"popular electronics" kind of books and it will start making better sense. One recommendation is Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk. For theory see Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits by Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey Lang.
while this book is simpler, i am still struggling with a lot of stuff, here page 6 https://imgur.com/a/83FQnAx What graph did they plot to derive delta Q / delta T I can tell that on the y axis they had time but I would have loved to see a representation of what the curve on the x axis would look like. A wire is uniform only in theory, in reality its area would keep fluctuating at every mm by very small amounts. Does this equation actually take the effect of this fluctuation. What does A1 and A2 look like, I am assuming A2- A1 = delta Q right? There needs to be an even more grounded book in electronics, something that you can show to a guy who literally has no idea about electronics in the slightest bit and by the end of the book, the guy is a master at it
This is basic Mathematics from introductory Differential Calculus. Refresh your memory from any Calculus book; if you don't know Calculus at all read Calculus: Basic Concepts for High Schools by Tarasov which you can get here - https://mirtitles.org/2018/09/04/calculus-basic-concepts-for...
Your picture is simple enough; but you have mixed up dq (this is the dependent function on the Y-axis) and dt (this is the independent variable on the X-axis) infinitesimals. Their ratio is simply the instantaneous rate of change of electric charge w.r.t. time which is what is the instantaneous electric current. As to the cross-sectional area of a wire varying over its length and how it affects current through it, you can neglect it for short wires and using a specific wire gauge for all normal electronics.
> There needs to be an even more grounded book in electronics, something that you can show to a guy who literally has no idea about electronics in the slightest bit and by the end of the book, the guy is a master at it
Electronics = Physics+Mathematics+Logical Thinking and there can be no shortcuts to its study. You have to put in some effort to study the subject. However things have been simplified and modularized to such a great extent nowadays that you can learn and do a great deal without understanding much of the mathematics and physics involved. The submitted book link in this post is a good basic one to start from.
I would love a book that gives a layman’s understanding of how to read and dissect a board you pull out of common modern device.
Say a roomba.
You might not know how or why each component works in detail at the end, but instead understand why the board is laid out the way it is and where each component controlling the functions and logic live, what might be broken, and whether and how to repair. I think if I were an impatient student with an interest in electronics that’s what I’d want. Then go back and study individual components, math, physics, and theory.
You could make a whole series: radio boards, home appliance boards, PC motherboards, car boards, etc.
Reverse Engineering a PCB is a well known field (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCB_reverse_engineering); but you still have to have some knowledge of individual components, math, physics, and theory before you can get started with this.
There is plenty of material and videos on the web if you search for it; also a book The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering: Unraveling the Beauty of the Original Design by Ng Keng Tiong.
The problem you are running into is that every book starting in the late 1970s has taken the approach that you must know math intuitively to first translate the subjects being taught and to understand the modeled behaviors they represent.
Intuitive approaches have largely been ignored and avoided since then, and its acted as a gatekeeper ever since to prevent people from going into Physics, Science, and the other more technical fields.
This behavior follows practices of ideology common to gnosticism, which as a TL;DR is the idea that some people are allowed access to secret knowledge and others aren't, and only such masters can tell and determine who should have and be able to learn that knowledge. It is a completely refuted false ideology when it comes to objective reality, has no basis, and is quite evil since in practice to do this you impose a complex system of torture to ensure anyone seeking this knowledge that is deemed unworthy by some arbitrary measure is conditioned towards PTSD, just like any dystopia. They are made to believe they just aren't good at math.
This was a purposeful choice made by the boomer generation of teachers in their professions, given the widespread adoption was systematic. They simply followed what they were taught by the NEA, and that is why things are falling apart today. Knowledge of critical education was withheld, options were withheld, and by constraining thought they enforce a path of control, and the dynamics which inevitably culminate in destruction or annihilation given sufficient time because they don't stop making these changes. It gets to a point where you have people who are no better than dependent parasites on the labor of few educated, but not necessarily intelligent people. Hubris naturally occurs in such people.
The limit is also a calculus item. There is a derivative which is the instantaneous rate of change at a point (the slope is the average rate of change between two points) the single point and limit technique is always with respect to some other measure, and a integral which is the area under a curve at a single point, as the change between the points goes to 0 (i.e. a limit).
You use the delta form of the limit to calculate derivatives before you learn and have proved the shorthand methods with delta epsilon rigor. Its quite abstract, and the vast majority of the material is useless to a non-math/Engineer major. You need to understand this before you can read this.
> Does this equation actually take the effect of this fluctuation
No, the equation shown is a theoretical model, in math. In many cases, you are taught lies initially because they are simple, and a pedagogical tool called lying to children has been used since the late 70s, in various forms though wasn't called that until the 90s. Then you have to unlearn those lies as you progress through gnosis.
The best way to learn these things that I've seen that is still in use today is called Lumped Matter Discipline. It makes certain assumptions about the type of components in use to simplify the equations to basic algebra. You still need to know Calculus enough to Derive Maxwells theorems when those assumptions don't hold. One of the assumptions made is that charge buildup is 0 (iirc), in other words the second derivative, or the derivative of dQ/dt is 0, which is the acceleration or rate of rate of change.
The MIT OCW videos cover these simplifications, its dry, but its better than 99% of the other material out there aside from maybe the Oliver Heaviside Lectures at the turn of the last century which are public domain.
The flowing water pipe analogy which brainwashed/indoctrinated people use to teach is intended to purposefully mislead, maybe not by the instructor, but by the person they took it from.
Understanding the process of diffusion of charge and the need for isolation is the correct way to be thinking of these things.
I can see how that would happen. When I first read the book I was definitely not a blank slate. But it's still a good recommendation for those with a little bit of knowledge who want a deeper understanding. At least it was for me. You'll only get so far without knowing the things in the book which are also introductory in nature.
If you don't know Ohm's law. You don't know what a resistor is. You've never built a simple circuit. Then this book may not be for you. Or it may if you're willing to put in the effort.
see now this is where I could totally use a recommendation. I dont know what a capacitor is, what a resistor is or what ohm's law is. I would expect there is atleast one book out there that can teach even an absolutely noob like me how to build a microcontroller circuit board from scratch. I mean not on page 1 obviously but maybe on page 1037?
The way to do this back in the day was to read application notes (in real books ;) that the chip vendors would print and give you for free). You would have everything spelled out in example circuits that you could put together yourself. I'm not sure where things stand today.
Having read both of them (well, I had the dragon book as a compiler course textbook, couldn't really read it all, donno who can) I think that's not a fair comparison.
AoE is extremely practical. I think the debate here is what exactly are "fundamentals" for electronics. I read AoE with high school physics and some hands on tinkering (mostly with exposure to software in embedded systems) as my background. At that point in my life I found it readable and enjoyable. It will help you get to the next level. Probably skipped some sections that weren't of interest though. I probably built my first electronic circuit in elementary school (some lights, switches, battery, etc.). If you just have no clue of anything electronics then yes, this is not the book for you. But it still is "electronics fundamentals" despite that.
I already knew something by the time I read it so that must have helped. I guess you do need a certain maturity level (in the subject) to get started but once you have it (maybe from somewhere else) I think it's great.
It reminds me of my first time trying to learn assembly language when I was in my early teens. I just could not make any sense of it. I knew a little bit of PASCAL and BASIC at the time and that was just alien territory. When I came back a few years later after some exposure then it all came together.
Two more of my favourites for Embedded Microcontroller based systems are;
Introduction to Embedded Systems: Using Microcontrollers and the MSP430 by Manuel Jimenez et al. An excellent textbook with an emphasis on interfacing to a MCU from a hardware perspective. The chapter titled "The Analog Signal Chain" is by itself worth the price of the book.
Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems by Michael Pont. Full of C code for 8051 which you can study and then adapt to your specific MCU family. Free book available at https://www.safetty.net/publications/pttes Also checkout all of his other books since they are also full of C code examples.
The best suggestion to get a core review of the basic concepts as starter, and that Dave from the EEVblog [1] recommended several times, is the section Fundamentals of Radio Electronics from [2] - "The Arrl Handbook for Radio Communications" . Plus you get all the other stuff around Radio.
It will cover all the basics. Old ones can be found on the intertubes. It is now a classical. Even used 2015 versions go for $300 dollars or more.
Is the top link just an advertisement for a book to be bought or is it something I'm missing with the link? There are countless of books and website with that kind of content, but Google is good enough to find them...
I don't know, it's hard for me to know what the author means by "fundamentals". I looked at the table of contents from the amazon website, and somethings that I consider pretty fundamental like Thevenin's Theorem didn't seem to be listed there. By comparison it's in Chapter 1, page 9 on my copy of "The Art of Electronics". I'm not trying to knock the book, it could be very handy, but I would use the term "basics" as opposed to "fundamentals" to describe the content as I understand it.
Back when I was about 12 (so 60 years ago, or so) you could get Phillips kits with a couple of transistors which allowed you to breadboard things like an amplifier, a radio, or a moisture detector. Had fun with them, but didn't really learn so much theory, and never have. Though I do know quite a bit about software.
The whole directory it's amazing too:
gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/links/
Also, there's Usenet. Subscribe to to sci.electronics.repair and sci.electronics. Outdated? Delayed answers? ok, but you will get correct ones and if you set your learning at a slower but dedicated pace, with no distractions (turn the notifications off), with either PDF or Physical books and a electronic simulator like TkGate, you will get the theory at really fast speeds.
From what I've seen, generally speaking, yes. Even more so if the site wasn't submitted by the owner.
Self-promotion has even always been explicitly allowed here, but I believe the guidelines contain some verbiage to the effect of "your primary activity here should not be self-promotion". I have no official info, but just from observing things over the years, it appears that accounts who promote their own content overly frequently, and/or only post self-promotional content, are the ones that get shadow-banned or set to auto-dead status.
Slightly baffled why this is on HN and especially as the no.1 link. For this to be upvoted so high I expected to find a spectacular interactive learning experience someone has made for fun, or at least a substantial free book.
But it's just another book on Amazon like a dozen other books on the same subject.
Sometimes an idea is upvoted more than the content at the submitted link, I think. i.e. people that want to learn and enjoy the discussion here, regardless of whether they end up thinking the Monk book is a useful resource to do so.
I keep putting off looking for something along his topic. Mostly becasue I want to learn to repair electronics. I have audio equipment that doesn't work right that I'm pretty sure just needs a small repair, but I'm stuck thinking about throwing it away becasue idk how to fix it. Pro repairs cost almost as much as what I have for some of them.
I was in the same boat. Had a pair of speakers go bad about a month ago, opened em up, saw a bunch of bulged capacitors. Tried my hand at replacing them, wasted way too much time doing it; in the end I didn't fix them. I either burnt something while desoldering or something else was borked.
I bought a new pair, but I walked away from it with more or less of a warm and fuzzy feeling that I did what I could. And a semi-decent soldering station, so next time this happens I will try again.
In addition this is maybe a good option (haven't looked into it) for people (like me, actually) who are just not interested in the formal aspects. I profesionally have nothing to do with electronics whatsoever, but am still naturally interested in it. Learning stuff with formal literature takes away all that natural interest for me and makes it work, so I would eventually stop doing it. Learning it in a practical way though would work way better and keep me interested and motivated.
I agree options are good as no single solution fits everyone, but I feel I too often hear the sentiment that school/uni/courses is useless. And that is just not true.
The function can be understood as a traffic cop at the intersection of a major road and a small 1 lane road.
He has instructions to only let cars down the major road if cars also come down the small road.
When a small trickle of cars come down the small road the intersection can act like a dimmer switch. It can also take a very small signal, and with a secondary more powerful input, amplify it.
But if you quickly alternate between no cars and lots of cars that dimmer switch acts like a toggle switch giving you 1s and 0s.
The physics is basically, when you sandwich two elements in close proximity that give up their electrons in a very specific way you get the macro phenomenon described above.
The reason the elements give up electrons this way also happens to be at the heart of a lot of cool concepts of math and is a demonstrable proof of some physics that used to be just theory. Learning the physics of transistors can teach you concepts that tie together the history of science from Ancient Greece to Quantum physics.
“Amplification” has to be one the most misunderstood concepts In electronics
No signal is really “boosted” by some weird process. What happens is a very powerful DC signal (i.e constant) is selectively allowed through, being mediated by the input signal. The “volume knob” on a power amp works by ATTENUATING that constant DC signal prior to “amplification”
This feels like a typical political comment (or youtube ad) but applied to electronics. Calling the common model false, writing it off as "weird", and then making up a new model with a hint of truth but still less explanatory power than the original one. Like, just don't.
It seems like you're stuck focusing on where the energy comes from, hence wanting to talk about the "powerful DC signal" (eg power supply). But the concept of amplification says nothing about where the energy comes from - it's merely talking about the magnitude of a signal being increased. You can also say "an audio amplifier requires a power supply". Multiple concepts apply to the same situation! This is true everywhere in life, but it's easier to ignore for software and impossible to ignore for electronic design.
Thanks, now my left ear hurts. Haha. All I know is it goes to 11
(I love that you’re passionate about the details and it is certainly beautiful to imagine it the way you describe. Im picturing an ocean and the mediation little birds flying down and sculpting the crests of waves. The attenuation is like the Venetian MOSE flood barriers.)
Oh, I guess those intersections with sensor controlled lights for a tiny side road are just JFETs. Maybe that will make me less annoyed at having to wait.
The BBC's Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity [0] documentary really made it click for me. The historical development and the conceptual development are woven together nicely.
No. This book won’t teach you that because based on the author’s previous work he doesn’t either. He knows how to sell books.
If you really want to know how transistors work and how to use them properly it’s going to be difficult as they sit on a fairly large pile of algebra and theory. If you don’t know this you might be able to get simple circuits working by cutting and pasting bits but you won’t be able to get past that ever.
The best references on this are actually The Art of Electronics. Not necessarily the main book but the associated student manual. Also the book Experimental Methods in RF Design by Wes Hayward actually has the most useful functional description and modelling approach of transistors.
You clearly missed something in the former or latter or do not know how to verify if stuff is as expected.
Usually I build out the DC bias model (static operating point), test it in LTspice, then add the AC/small signal model on top. Or large signal model for switching etc. Everything generally works unless I did something stupid or it’s RF where things get a little less predictable.
What is the most challenging concept about transistors? I think the classic valve analogy (AKA Art of Electronics "Transistor Man") works to a large extent. To fully understand the physics requires a lot more but in between, there are relatively simple equations that describe the main current flow as related to the control terminal's voltage or current depending on the transistor type.
To go from single transistor to multi-transistor circuits was a big leap for me, but most of it is understanding how particular subcircuits work and recognizing them as blocks of a larger circuit.
The exponential model tying collector current to base-emitter voltage is why I think most old-school references just treat BJTs as a fixed gain base-current amplifier. Of course it doesn't help that the gain is unknown and varies with process parameters!
The classic Voltage as Water in a pipe, or check valve comparison are destructive and misleading analogies that do not demonstrate the behavior except in isolation, and that narrow scope of isolation isn't provided leading towards purposeful struggle.
The ideas and practices of the gnostics in general are just stupid.
If you can't explain how a PN junction, or its composites actually function simply, you don't understand what you are talking about. As simply but not more simply than necessary, without using math.
My recommendation - start with FETs (MOSFETs) for switching instead of BJTs. FETs are voltage controlled devices, which maps more naturally to how people think about electronics without the math-heavy analysis.
You summarize the past convestion in this thread.
- Start with a overall summary in a single paragraph
- Then show a bullet pointed list of the most interesting illustrative quotes from the piece
- Then a bullet point list of the most unusual ideas
- provide a longer summary that covers points not included already
- Finally, Step by step/phase by phase understanding of the ideas discussed above
This looks cool! I’ve been looking for a good valve amp to build from a kit, ideally I want it to be integrated, EL34 tubes and at least 25 watts, anyone know of anything? Bonus points for designed/supplied in the UK.
> Is it not obvious? The number of protons is the atomic number. If "c" was the answer, ions couldn't exist.
The answer key, unless it has changed since you wrote your comment, has the correct answer of (a) for that question (midway down page 3). You seem to have scrolled to the very end of the document which has the answers to a completely different section.
Knowledge structuring is key for self-taught learning. I've found that organizing resources using MECE principles (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) significantly improves the learning curve, especially for complex technical topics.
When I was a teen, I applied to be an ATT lineman. At that time at least, they sent you a giant study guide that has everything one might want to know about electricity. I was actually blown away by the material.
I've since lost it, but wonder if it exists on the Internet somewhere. My cursory search didn't return anything.
This page lists several ATT publications and has a link to a 1953 publication that could fit your description (and could have been a subsequent editini).
Otherwise, maybe you'd recognize the name as one of the other publications?
https://www.long-lines.net/sources/ATT_tech_books.html
Nice! I browsed through the 1953 edition quickly, and it's very similar. So probably some updated version of that.
I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying. This would have been before the internet was big, so probably isn't as exciting now.
As a very young boy in the 1950s or 60s, I bought a new flavor of Life Savers candy and enjoyed this new flavor so much I wrote the company complimenting them on the great flavor. Some time later, they sent me a box containing all their flavors of Life Savers.
Not the same thing but a comment on what things were like back in the day.
For comparison, last year I was eating a packaged slice of ham and bit something hard, a rock or bone or something. Didn't hurt me or anything, but still odd. It was small and white, but could have been anything. I threw it out.
Later that day I wrote the company just to let them know, thinking if others had similar issues they could investigate.
They wrote me back saying it's impossible their packs would have bones in them, and it's possible my own tooth broke/chipped and that's what I was biting, and attached a coupon for something like 35 cents off one pack.
I found the reply to be really bizarre - I'd probably rather they not responded at all.
Funnily enough, I have indeed have had part of a tooth (an impacted wisdom tooth) come off when eationg something, and was kind of grossed out that my food could contain this small white hard stone-like thing... until later that day I realized I was missing a part of a tooth.
Actually, it's happened twice, as about 15 years after that I had a bad cavity and fracture in a forward molar, and a few days before a scheduled root canal it happened again, but this time I suspected what had happened as soon as I encountered something hard all of a sudden while chewing something that shouldn't really have bits as hard as that in it.
Which is to say, their response that perhaps it was your own tooth may not have been as out of left field as you might have thought. It's probably a somewhat common occurrence.
Nice. I did that with a brand of orange juice that I really liked as a kid. They replied with a bunch of coupons for free orange juice.
Internet Archive has a 1961 edition, and it's mirrored on 4nn4's Archive.
https://archive.org/details/principlesofelec0000unse_a3j0
(AA can be searched using an archive.org file slug, e.g. "principles...a3j0", or obviously by using the title)
It only shows the first pages and the last one for me.
Which is why I mentioned the AA mirror. There's another copy of the 1961 edition on IA (without the _a3j0 suffix) that can has borrowing enabled, so all pages should be accessible. Both are mirrored on AA.
> I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying.
It was a hangover from their days a quasi-socialist, monopolistic enterprise ("We're the Phone Company"), when they could afford to be "inefficient" in that way -- scare quotes because it's difficult to calculate the cost of preparation and dissemination against all the high-value careers the material may have inspired. These days, an accountant would glance at the cost and cut it out without thinking twice.
These days the cost would be funded by money printing, and there is no need to train because that is the job of university even when they don't actually train people.
It is exciting! I used to read the Ma-Bell manuals in the science and math library at the University of Oregon.
Edited for emphasis.
I found Moritz Klein's videos very interesting to help me understand practical aspects of circuit design as related to analog synthesizers:
https://www.youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0/playlists
Hear hear! I'm currently learning DIY synths from that very channel too, currently on episode 3, very good videos for laymen. Although some extra resources are needed if you want to have further understanding, as he doesn't go too deep into theory, but for being video instructions/tutorials, I find that the balance is good on that.
I haven't watched any of the lectures, but there's also Georgia Tech's Analog Circuits for Music Synthesis https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOunECWxELQS5bMdWo9Vh...
I can also highly recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill.
I learned from the 1st edition, in 1984. It's worth noting that the book was actually written for scientists rather than engineers. I was a math and physics major. By a long standing tradition, an electronics course is a standard part of the undergrad physics curriculum.
My dad had "Electronics for Scientists" by Malmstadt et al., 1962. His employer put a bunch of scientists through an electronics course.
The contrast was pretty remarkable. It's all about vacuum tubes, with some introduction of transistors. The 1st edition of AoE had a reasonable amount of material on digital circuits for back then, but I imagine a similar contrast between 1984 and today.
The span of 40+ years has certainly changed how I do electronics.
After The Cat passed, I found a book under her bed entitled "Electronics for Cats". I wonder what she had been plotting.
I volunteer at an animal shelter. A few months ago, while entering kitten weights into a database, I looked at the bookshelf above the desk I was sitting at. The first book I saw was “How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety.”
Thumbs. They all want thumbs!
That's an awful recommendation for an entry level electronics.
That is like recommending a Knuth book for somebody wanting to learn Python.
'electronics fundamentals' is equivalent to 'python'?
Surely this is like recommending a Knuth book (TAoCP?) to someone wanting to learn 'CS fundamentals', which.. sure?
I see you, metaphor master...
? If you think it's an arbitrary choice then I'm not sure what your point was in the first place.
I am acknowledging your analogy is better than mine. Just take the compliment...
As a neutral reader, it read more like a dismissal.
i don't recommend this book at all. I know nothing about electronics. Think blank slate and this book went straight over my head. I caught it from the comments of one such post on HN
AoE is not meant for people who are starting from zero. Pair it with some other "popular electronics" kind of books and it will start making better sense. One recommendation is Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk. For theory see Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits by Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey Lang.
while this book is simpler, i am still struggling with a lot of stuff, here page 6 https://imgur.com/a/83FQnAx What graph did they plot to derive delta Q / delta T I can tell that on the y axis they had time but I would have loved to see a representation of what the curve on the x axis would look like. A wire is uniform only in theory, in reality its area would keep fluctuating at every mm by very small amounts. Does this equation actually take the effect of this fluctuation. What does A1 and A2 look like, I am assuming A2- A1 = delta Q right? There needs to be an even more grounded book in electronics, something that you can show to a guy who literally has no idea about electronics in the slightest bit and by the end of the book, the guy is a master at it
This is basic Mathematics from introductory Differential Calculus. Refresh your memory from any Calculus book; if you don't know Calculus at all read Calculus: Basic Concepts for High Schools by Tarasov which you can get here - https://mirtitles.org/2018/09/04/calculus-basic-concepts-for...
Your picture is simple enough; but you have mixed up dq (this is the dependent function on the Y-axis) and dt (this is the independent variable on the X-axis) infinitesimals. Their ratio is simply the instantaneous rate of change of electric charge w.r.t. time which is what is the instantaneous electric current. As to the cross-sectional area of a wire varying over its length and how it affects current through it, you can neglect it for short wires and using a specific wire gauge for all normal electronics.
> There needs to be an even more grounded book in electronics, something that you can show to a guy who literally has no idea about electronics in the slightest bit and by the end of the book, the guy is a master at it
Electronics = Physics+Mathematics+Logical Thinking and there can be no shortcuts to its study. You have to put in some effort to study the subject. However things have been simplified and modularized to such a great extent nowadays that you can learn and do a great deal without understanding much of the mathematics and physics involved. The submitted book link in this post is a good basic one to start from.
I would love a book that gives a layman’s understanding of how to read and dissect a board you pull out of common modern device.
Say a roomba.
You might not know how or why each component works in detail at the end, but instead understand why the board is laid out the way it is and where each component controlling the functions and logic live, what might be broken, and whether and how to repair. I think if I were an impatient student with an interest in electronics that’s what I’d want. Then go back and study individual components, math, physics, and theory.
You could make a whole series: radio boards, home appliance boards, PC motherboards, car boards, etc.
Reverse Engineering a PCB is a well known field (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCB_reverse_engineering); but you still have to have some knowledge of individual components, math, physics, and theory before you can get started with this.
There is plenty of material and videos on the web if you search for it; also a book The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering: Unraveling the Beauty of the Original Design by Ng Keng Tiong.
Thank you! This is great!
The above deals only with PCB RE; if you would like to learn about overall Product RE see also;
Reverse Engineering: Mechanisms, Structures, Systems & Materials by Robert Messler.
Product Design: Techniques in Reverse Engineering and New Product Development by Kevin Otto and Kristin Wood.
The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware by Andrew "bunnie" Huang.
That's standard Leibniz notation from Calculus.
The problem you are running into is that every book starting in the late 1970s has taken the approach that you must know math intuitively to first translate the subjects being taught and to understand the modeled behaviors they represent.
Intuitive approaches have largely been ignored and avoided since then, and its acted as a gatekeeper ever since to prevent people from going into Physics, Science, and the other more technical fields.
This behavior follows practices of ideology common to gnosticism, which as a TL;DR is the idea that some people are allowed access to secret knowledge and others aren't, and only such masters can tell and determine who should have and be able to learn that knowledge. It is a completely refuted false ideology when it comes to objective reality, has no basis, and is quite evil since in practice to do this you impose a complex system of torture to ensure anyone seeking this knowledge that is deemed unworthy by some arbitrary measure is conditioned towards PTSD, just like any dystopia. They are made to believe they just aren't good at math.
This was a purposeful choice made by the boomer generation of teachers in their professions, given the widespread adoption was systematic. They simply followed what they were taught by the NEA, and that is why things are falling apart today. Knowledge of critical education was withheld, options were withheld, and by constraining thought they enforce a path of control, and the dynamics which inevitably culminate in destruction or annihilation given sufficient time because they don't stop making these changes. It gets to a point where you have people who are no better than dependent parasites on the labor of few educated, but not necessarily intelligent people. Hubris naturally occurs in such people.
The limit is also a calculus item. There is a derivative which is the instantaneous rate of change at a point (the slope is the average rate of change between two points) the single point and limit technique is always with respect to some other measure, and a integral which is the area under a curve at a single point, as the change between the points goes to 0 (i.e. a limit).
You use the delta form of the limit to calculate derivatives before you learn and have proved the shorthand methods with delta epsilon rigor. Its quite abstract, and the vast majority of the material is useless to a non-math/Engineer major. You need to understand this before you can read this.
> Does this equation actually take the effect of this fluctuation
No, the equation shown is a theoretical model, in math. In many cases, you are taught lies initially because they are simple, and a pedagogical tool called lying to children has been used since the late 70s, in various forms though wasn't called that until the 90s. Then you have to unlearn those lies as you progress through gnosis.
The best way to learn these things that I've seen that is still in use today is called Lumped Matter Discipline. It makes certain assumptions about the type of components in use to simplify the equations to basic algebra. You still need to know Calculus enough to Derive Maxwells theorems when those assumptions don't hold. One of the assumptions made is that charge buildup is 0 (iirc), in other words the second derivative, or the derivative of dQ/dt is 0, which is the acceleration or rate of rate of change.
The MIT OCW videos cover these simplifications, its dry, but its better than 99% of the other material out there aside from maybe the Oliver Heaviside Lectures at the turn of the last century which are public domain.
The flowing water pipe analogy which brainwashed/indoctrinated people use to teach is intended to purposefully mislead, maybe not by the instructor, but by the person they took it from.
Understanding the process of diffusion of charge and the need for isolation is the correct way to be thinking of these things.
Try pairing it with the companion "Learning the Art of Electronics." It's a hands-on lab workbook that complements the main book. It's very practical.
Or better yet, the "Learning the Learning the Art of Electronics" which breaks down the companion book.
I'm awaiting the blog series that breaks down the breaking down book further, "Learning the Learning the Learning the Art of Electronics".
I can see how that would happen. When I first read the book I was definitely not a blank slate. But it's still a good recommendation for those with a little bit of knowledge who want a deeper understanding. At least it was for me. You'll only get so far without knowing the things in the book which are also introductory in nature.
If you don't know Ohm's law. You don't know what a resistor is. You've never built a simple circuit. Then this book may not be for you. Or it may if you're willing to put in the effort.
see now this is where I could totally use a recommendation. I dont know what a capacitor is, what a resistor is or what ohm's law is. I would expect there is atleast one book out there that can teach even an absolutely noob like me how to build a microcontroller circuit board from scratch. I mean not on page 1 obviously but maybe on page 1037?
The way to do this back in the day was to read application notes (in real books ;) that the chip vendors would print and give you for free). You would have everything spelled out in example circuits that you could put together yourself. I'm not sure where things stand today.
I googled and found one example: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/A...
I found it impenetrable.
Horowitz and Hill is the canonical recommendation for novices, and a text that almost no novice actually learns from.
Like the dragon book for compilers.
Having read both of them (well, I had the dragon book as a compiler course textbook, couldn't really read it all, donno who can) I think that's not a fair comparison.
AoE is extremely practical. I think the debate here is what exactly are "fundamentals" for electronics. I read AoE with high school physics and some hands on tinkering (mostly with exposure to software in embedded systems) as my background. At that point in my life I found it readable and enjoyable. It will help you get to the next level. Probably skipped some sections that weren't of interest though. I probably built my first electronic circuit in elementary school (some lights, switches, battery, etc.). If you just have no clue of anything electronics then yes, this is not the book for you. But it still is "electronics fundamentals" despite that.
I already knew something by the time I read it so that must have helped. I guess you do need a certain maturity level (in the subject) to get started but once you have it (maybe from somewhere else) I think it's great.
It reminds me of my first time trying to learn assembly language when I was in my early teens. I just could not make any sense of it. I knew a little bit of PASCAL and BASIC at the time and that was just alien territory. When I came back a few years later after some exposure then it all came together.
Try going back to the book ;)
If you began with Forth, assembly wouldn't be that odd.
That's what I learned from!
I really liked Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition, by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk.
I’m definitely interested in more electronics books for self study though.
Designing Embedded Hardware: Create New Computers and Devices by John Catsoulis.
Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems by Jerry Twomey.
There are lots more with varying levels of basics/advanced but the above two are what came to my mind immediately for self study.
Thanks!
Two more of my favourites for Embedded Microcontroller based systems are;
Introduction to Embedded Systems: Using Microcontrollers and the MSP430 by Manuel Jimenez et al. An excellent textbook with an emphasis on interfacing to a MCU from a hardware perspective. The chapter titled "The Analog Signal Chain" is by itself worth the price of the book.
Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems by Michael Pont. Full of C code for 8051 which you can study and then adapt to your specific MCU family. Free book available at https://www.safetty.net/publications/pttes Also checkout all of his other books since they are also full of C code examples.
It’s a fucking awful book. Sorry. It’s just terrible. It looks good but it’s mostly useless.
Pointless comment without some detail.
The best suggestion to get a core review of the basic concepts as starter, and that Dave from the EEVblog [1] recommended several times, is the section Fundamentals of Radio Electronics from [2] - "The Arrl Handbook for Radio Communications" . Plus you get all the other stuff around Radio.
It will cover all the basics. Old ones can be found on the intertubes. It is now a classical. Even used 2015 versions go for $300 dollars or more.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@EEVblog/playlists
{2] https://www.arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2023
Is the top link just an advertisement for a book to be bought or is it something I'm missing with the link? There are countless of books and website with that kind of content, but Google is good enough to find them...
This is just an advertisement for buying the book. It was someone's idea of a shameless plug.
I don't know, it's hard for me to know what the author means by "fundamentals". I looked at the table of contents from the amazon website, and somethings that I consider pretty fundamental like Thevenin's Theorem didn't seem to be listed there. By comparison it's in Chapter 1, page 9 on my copy of "The Art of Electronics". I'm not trying to knock the book, it could be very handy, but I would use the term "basics" as opposed to "fundamentals" to describe the content as I understand it.
Back when I was about 12 (so 60 years ago, or so) you could get Phillips kits with a couple of transistors which allowed you to breadboard things like an amplifier, a radio, or a moisture detector. Had fun with them, but didn't really learn so much theory, and never have. Though I do know quite a bit about software.
I've got "Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series" as a PDF from a gopher hole:
gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/neetsmodules_202003
The whole directory it's amazing too: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/links/
Also, there's Usenet. Subscribe to to sci.electronics.repair and sci.electronics. Outdated? Delayed answers? ok, but you will get correct ones and if you set your learning at a slower but dedicated pace, with no distractions (turn the notifications off), with either PDF or Physical books and a electronic simulator like TkGate, you will get the theory at really fast speeds.
Are advertisements like this allowed on HN?
From what I've seen, generally speaking, yes. Even more so if the site wasn't submitted by the owner.
Self-promotion has even always been explicitly allowed here, but I believe the guidelines contain some verbiage to the effect of "your primary activity here should not be self-promotion". I have no official info, but just from observing things over the years, it appears that accounts who promote their own content overly frequently, and/or only post self-promotional content, are the ones that get shadow-banned or set to auto-dead status.
You can submit anything, the community decides if it's interesting enough.
Is Simon on HN?
Reminds me of those old RadioShack hobby electronic boards with all the different components to try and work with.
Slightly baffled why this is on HN and especially as the no.1 link. For this to be upvoted so high I expected to find a spectacular interactive learning experience someone has made for fun, or at least a substantial free book.
But it's just another book on Amazon like a dozen other books on the same subject.
Sometimes an idea is upvoted more than the content at the submitted link, I think. i.e. people that want to learn and enjoy the discussion here, regardless of whether they end up thinking the Monk book is a useful resource to do so.
Sometimes it's a paid botnet.
Agreed
Yeah this is an ad
I wish someone would write an electronics book for hobbyists solely using simulators like Falstad and PCB design using KiCad.
I keep putting off looking for something along his topic. Mostly becasue I want to learn to repair electronics. I have audio equipment that doesn't work right that I'm pretty sure just needs a small repair, but I'm stuck thinking about throwing it away becasue idk how to fix it. Pro repairs cost almost as much as what I have for some of them.
I was in the same boat. Had a pair of speakers go bad about a month ago, opened em up, saw a bunch of bulged capacitors. Tried my hand at replacing them, wasted way too much time doing it; in the end I didn't fix them. I either burnt something while desoldering or something else was borked.
I bought a new pair, but I walked away from it with more or less of a warm and fuzzy feeling that I did what I could. And a semi-decent soldering station, so next time this happens I will try again.
What's wrong with taking formal courses? I think that is a perfectly legitimate way of learning stuff.
I think it was not implied that there is something wrong with it. It’s just that, that requires having access to it and being available to take it.
In addition this is maybe a good option (haven't looked into it) for people (like me, actually) who are just not interested in the formal aspects. I profesionally have nothing to do with electronics whatsoever, but am still naturally interested in it. Learning stuff with formal literature takes away all that natural interest for me and makes it work, so I would eventually stop doing it. Learning it in a practical way though would work way better and keep me interested and motivated.
I agree options are good as no single solution fits everyone, but I feel I too often hear the sentiment that school/uni/courses is useless. And that is just not true.
True, same here. There needs to be a good balance of formal and practical/general information.
The best way to learn this stuff is hands on, build kits, those 200 in one things RadioShack used to sell, etc
what build kits are available now?
Anything you want! Check out Sparkfun and Adafruit, they have kits for everything!
Will I finally understand transistors?
The function can be understood as a traffic cop at the intersection of a major road and a small 1 lane road.
He has instructions to only let cars down the major road if cars also come down the small road.
When a small trickle of cars come down the small road the intersection can act like a dimmer switch. It can also take a very small signal, and with a secondary more powerful input, amplify it.
But if you quickly alternate between no cars and lots of cars that dimmer switch acts like a toggle switch giving you 1s and 0s.
The physics is basically, when you sandwich two elements in close proximity that give up their electrons in a very specific way you get the macro phenomenon described above.
The reason the elements give up electrons this way also happens to be at the heart of a lot of cool concepts of math and is a demonstrable proof of some physics that used to be just theory. Learning the physics of transistors can teach you concepts that tie together the history of science from Ancient Greece to Quantum physics.
“Amplification” has to be one the most misunderstood concepts In electronics
No signal is really “boosted” by some weird process. What happens is a very powerful DC signal (i.e constant) is selectively allowed through, being mediated by the input signal. The “volume knob” on a power amp works by ATTENUATING that constant DC signal prior to “amplification”
This feels like a typical political comment (or youtube ad) but applied to electronics. Calling the common model false, writing it off as "weird", and then making up a new model with a hint of truth but still less explanatory power than the original one. Like, just don't.
It seems like you're stuck focusing on where the energy comes from, hence wanting to talk about the "powerful DC signal" (eg power supply). But the concept of amplification says nothing about where the energy comes from - it's merely talking about the magnitude of a signal being increased. You can also say "an audio amplifier requires a power supply". Multiple concepts apply to the same situation! This is true everywhere in life, but it's easier to ignore for software and impossible to ignore for electronic design.
Thanks, now my left ear hurts. Haha. All I know is it goes to 11
(I love that you’re passionate about the details and it is certainly beautiful to imagine it the way you describe. Im picturing an ocean and the mediation little birds flying down and sculpting the crests of waves. The attenuation is like the Venetian MOSE flood barriers.)
Oh, I guess those intersections with sensor controlled lights for a tiny side road are just JFETs. Maybe that will make me less annoyed at having to wait.
Now you know how your electrons feel!
The BBC's Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity [0] documentary really made it click for me. The historical development and the conceptual development are woven together nicely.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_Awe:_The_Story_of_El...
No. This book won’t teach you that because based on the author’s previous work he doesn’t either. He knows how to sell books.
If you really want to know how transistors work and how to use them properly it’s going to be difficult as they sit on a fairly large pile of algebra and theory. If you don’t know this you might be able to get simple circuits working by cutting and pasting bits but you won’t be able to get past that ever.
The best references on this are actually The Art of Electronics. Not necessarily the main book but the associated student manual. Also the book Experimental Methods in RF Design by Wes Hayward actually has the most useful functional description and modelling approach of transistors.
OK I get how they work conceptually, I get how they work physically, but when I actually try to build a circuit with them it never works.
You clearly missed something in the former or latter or do not know how to verify if stuff is as expected.
Usually I build out the DC bias model (static operating point), test it in LTspice, then add the AC/small signal model on top. Or large signal model for switching etc. Everything generally works unless I did something stupid or it’s RF where things get a little less predictable.
What is the most challenging concept about transistors? I think the classic valve analogy (AKA Art of Electronics "Transistor Man") works to a large extent. To fully understand the physics requires a lot more but in between, there are relatively simple equations that describe the main current flow as related to the control terminal's voltage or current depending on the transistor type.
To go from single transistor to multi-transistor circuits was a big leap for me, but most of it is understanding how particular subcircuits work and recognizing them as blocks of a larger circuit.
BJTs were a real pain. Uncooperative exponentials fighting each other, or something like that, if I haven’t managed to forget successfully…
The exponential model tying collector current to base-emitter voltage is why I think most old-school references just treat BJTs as a fixed gain base-current amplifier. Of course it doesn't help that the gain is unknown and varies with process parameters!
The classic Voltage as Water in a pipe, or check valve comparison are destructive and misleading analogies that do not demonstrate the behavior except in isolation, and that narrow scope of isolation isn't provided leading towards purposeful struggle.
The ideas and practices of the gnostics in general are just stupid.
If you can't explain how a PN junction, or its composites actually function simply, you don't understand what you are talking about. As simply but not more simply than necessary, without using math.
I actually have the 3rd edition of this book, and, yea I think it explained transistors pretty well.
Mind, I don’t remember any of it, I never applied it, but at the time, it explained it to me.
It helps a lot understanding diodes first. Like, really understand them. Then transistors are built on top of that knowledge.
My recommendation - start with FETs (MOSFETs) for switching instead of BJTs. FETs are voltage controlled devices, which maps more naturally to how people think about electronics without the math-heavy analysis.
Depends if you want the engineer’s perspective or the device physics perspective.
I think the MOSFET circuit diagram has always made more sense to me because you can see intuitively see the “plunger” as the control input.
Honestly just spend a few hours talking to Claude about them, I had a few breakthrough moments doing that.
put this prompt and share the response:
You summarize the past convestion in this thread. - Start with a overall summary in a single paragraph - Then show a bullet pointed list of the most interesting illustrative quotes from the piece - Then a bullet point list of the most unusual ideas - provide a longer summary that covers points not included already - Finally, Step by step/phase by phase understanding of the ideas discussed above
This looks cool! I’ve been looking for a good valve amp to build from a kit, ideally I want it to be integrated, EL34 tubes and at least 25 watts, anyone know of anything? Bonus points for designed/supplied in the UK.
Any recommendation for open source software or website where one can learn about electricity in an interactive or gamified way?
Probably needs (2022) in the title. The book is available on libgen for anyone who wants to take a look.
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I have been wanting a tutorial like this. Thanks
So, is this book any good?
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The answer key to the first quiz says "1. a"
What are you trying to convey?
Is it not obvious? The number of protons is the atomic number. If "c" was the answer, ions couldn't exist.
> Is it not obvious? The number of protons is the atomic number. If "c" was the answer, ions couldn't exist.
The answer key, unless it has changed since you wrote your comment, has the correct answer of (a) for that question (midway down page 3). You seem to have scrolled to the very end of the document which has the answers to a completely different section.
Answers: 1. a
Knowledge structuring is key for self-taught learning. I've found that organizing resources using MECE principles (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) significantly improves the learning curve, especially for complex technical topics.
"Don't bother learning anything. AI will do all of this grunt work soon. You will be free to do what you really want"
It kind of misses the point that many people actually want to know how things work and how to design and build things. This isn't going to go away.
Is this a random quote? Or something said on the page or this thread?
It seems to be random as neither the discussion here nor the submitted page has anything like it to either be a quote or paraphrasing of something.
there will be new jobs.