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.
