This is an excellent reference for anyone involved in electronics. It covers the vast majority of electronics components, providing beginner to advanced level information. The book also provides example circuits for many of the components discussed.
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Posted October 8, 2008
I was really hoping the second edition would be better than the first. I wish I would have looked for an errata before I purchased this book. I located one list at bucknel.edu that was 22 pages long. This book is essentially useless for anyone not very versed in electronics. It's a better 'Where's Waldo?' for EEs that want a good pastime finding errors in the text. McGraw Hill really needs to recall both editions of this book.
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Posted October 13, 2002
I recommend this book to everybody who wants to lose their sanity. In the first two chapters alone, I found at least five misprints that will cause you to waste hours recalculating. Not only that, the book is terrible at explaining things in a manner that would let you pass any sort of electronics exam, i.e. you have to read the author's mind in order to really understand electronics theories.
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Posted December 2, 2002
This is a good book--regardless of the 1-star review I saw listed. I found the explanations very insightful, and the teaching very good. It should be noted that the first chapter is a bit technical in the math, but you actually don't have to understand that chapter to use the rest of the book. The mistakes are there, but I haven't found any that are show stoppers. I give this book 5 stars for content, but subtract one star for typos--not 4 stars! This is one of the most complete and understandable books on electronics I've come across.
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Posted December 8, 2001
This book is a wonderful buy for anyone wishing to learn Electronics theory and application. It contains everything to learn about all the needed parts for creating radios, lasers, computer parts and more! The only problem I had with this text is that it had a few computational errors (which were not difficult to locate). Anyone with an 11th grade or above education will be able to understand what they read, and apply it to everyday electronics.
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Posted April 11, 2001
I wish I had this as a text book in college, it could have easily replaced all the c-r-a-p-p-y text books that I had to deal with... namely anything authored by Fortney! - I now use all my EE books as only reference material since I found this one. It is short and sweat and melds just the right amount of theory, real world examples and metaphoric examples.
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Posted July 21, 2000
This book is an excellent text for practically anyone studying or practicing electronics. The manner in which the author explains concepts is crystal clear, comprehensive, and practical minded. The selection of topics covered is also impressive. This is one of best introductory text on electronics around. The only problem I had with this text where some mislabeled symbols on a few pages, and a few typos. Other than that, an excellent book.
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Posted November 21, 2008
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More About This Textbook
Overview
THE ELECTRONICS KNOW-HOW YOU NEED TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL INVENTOR
"If there is a successor to Make: Electronics, then I believe it would have to be Practical Electronics for Inventors....perfect for an electrical engineering student or maybe a high school student with a strong aptitude for electronics....I’ve been anxiously awaiting this update, and it was well worth the wait."—GeekDad (Wired.com)
Spark your creativity and gain the electronics skills required to transform your innovative ideas into functioning gadgets. This hands-on, updated guide outlines electrical principles and provides thorough, easy-to-follow instructions, schematics, and illustrations. Find
out how to select components, safely assemble circuits, perform error tests, and build plug-and-play prototypes. Practical Electronics for Inventors, Third Edition, features all-new chapters on sensors, microcontrollers, modular electronics, and the latest software tools.
Coverage includes:
Editorial Reviews
Booknews
Covering the same basic information as other introductory electronics books, only presenting the information on particular devices and circuits do before discussing the physics of how they work, this text covers basic circuit components, semiconductors, optoelectronics, integrated circuits, operational amplifiers, filters, oscillators and timers, voltage regulators, audio electronics, digital electronics, DC motors, RC servos, and other devices. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Product Details
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Meet the Author
Paul Scherz is a physicist/mechanical engineer who received his B.S. in physics from the University of Wisconsin. He is an inventor/hobbyist in electronics, an area he grew to appreciate through his experience at the University's Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics and the Department of Plasma Physics.
Dr. Simon Monk has a degree in Cybernetics and Computer Science and a PhD in Software Engineering. Monk spent several years as an academic before he returned to industry, co-founding the mobile software company Momote Ltd. He has been an active electronics hobbyist since his early teens and is a full time writer on hobby electronics and open source hardware. Dr. Monk is the author of numerous electronics books, including 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius and Arduino + Android Projects for the Evil Genius.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Introduction to Electronics
Perhaps the most common predicament a newcomer faces when learning electronics is figuring out exactly what it is he or she must learn. What topics are worth covering, and in which general order should they be covered? A good starting point to get a sense of what is important to learn and in what general order is presented in the flowchart in Fig. 1.1. This chart provides an overview of the basic elements that go into designing practical electrical gadgets and represents the information you will find in this book. The following paragraphs describe these basic elements in detail.At the top of the chart comes the theory. This involves learning about voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, inductance, and various laws and theorems that help predict the size and direction of voltages and currents within circuits. As you learn the basic theory, you will be introduced to basic passive components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers.
Next down the line comes discrete passive circuits. Discrete passive circuits include current-limiting networks, voltage dividers, filter circuits, attenuators, and so on. These simple circuits, by themselves, are not very interesting, but they are vital ingredients in more complex circuits.
After you have learned about passive components and circuits, you move on to discrete active devices, which are built from semiconductor materials. These devices consist mainly of diodes (one-way current-flow gates), transistors (electrically controlled switches /amplifiers), and thyristors (electrically controlled switches only).
Once you have covered the discrete active devices, you move onto discrete active/passive circuits. Some of these circuits include rectifiers (ac-to-do converters), amplifiers, oscillators, modulators, mixers, and voltage regulators. This is where things start getting interesting.
To make things easier on the circuit designer, manufacturers have created integrated circuits (ICs) that contain discrete circuits-like the ones mentioned in the last paragraph-that are crammed onto a tiny chip of silicon. The chip usually is housed within a plastic package, where tiny internal wires link the chip to external metal terminals. Integrated circuits such as amplifiers and voltage regulators are referred to as analog devices, which means that they respond to and produce signals of varying degrees of voltage. (This is unlike digital ICs, which work with only two voltage levels.) Becoming familiar with integrated circuits is a necessity for any practical circuit designer.
Digital electronics comes next. Digital circuits work with only two voltage states, high (e.g., 5 V) or low (e.g., 0 V). The reason for having only two voltage states has to do with the ease of data (numbers, symbols, control information) processing and storage. The process of encoding information into signals that digital circuits can use involves combining bits (1 's and 0's, equivalent to high and low voltages) into discrete-meaning "words." The designer dictates what these words will mean to a specific circuit. Unlike analog electronics, digital electronics uses a whole new set of components, which at the heart are all integrated in form. A huge number of specialized ICs are used in digital electronics. Some of these ICs are designed to perform logical operations on input information, others are designed to count, while still others are designed to store information that can be retrieved later on. Digital ICs include logic gates, flip-flops, shift registers, counters, memories, processors, and the like. Digital circuits are what give electrical gadgets "brains." In order for digital circuits to interact with analog circuits, special analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion circuits are needed to convert analog signals into special strings of 1's and 0's. Likewise, digitalto-analog conversion circuits are used to convert strings of 1's and 0's into analog signals.
Throughout your study of electronics, you will learn about various input-output (I/O) devices (transducers). Input devices convert physical signals, such as sound, light, and pressure, into electrical signals that circuits can use. These devices include microphones, phototransistors, switches, keyboards, thermistors, strain gauges, generators, and antennas. Output devices convert electrical signals into physical signals. Output devices include lamps, LED and LCD displays, speakers, buzzers, motors (dc, servo, stepper), solenoids, and antennas. It is these I/O devices that allow humans and circuits to communicate with one another. And finally comes the construction/ testing phase. This involves learning to read schematic diagrams, constructing circuit prototypes using breadboards, testing prototypes (using multimeters, oscilloscopes, and logic probes), revising prototypes (if needed), and constructing final circuits using various tools and special circuit boards...
Table of Contents
Part I - Theory
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Theory
Part II - Devices
Chapter 3. Basic Electronic Components
Chapter 4. Discrete Semiconductors
Chapter 5. Optoelectronics
Chapter 6. Sensors
Chapter 7. Hands-on Electronics
Part III - Design
Chapter 8. Operational Amplifiers
Chapter 9. Filters
Chapter 10. Oscillators and Timers
Chapter 11. Voltage Regulators and Power Supplies
Chapter 12. Digital Electronics
Chapter 13. Microcontrollers
Chapter 14. Electromechanical Devices
Chapter 15. Audio Electronics
Chapter 16. Applied Electronics
Part IV - Appendixes
Appendix A. Power Distribution and Home Wiring
Appendix B. Error Analysis
Appendix C. Useful Facts and Formulas
Appendix D. Component Data, List of Logic ICs, Foreign Semiconductor Codes