I am a beginner at electronics, and was wondering if there is a perticular good book (or website) that could guide me through the practical aspect of electronics. I have read the basics enough to know how to solve most circuts but I have no Idea how to start actually building things. I have a soldering iron, some solder, and know a store where to get all rest of the materials (resistors, capacitors, etc...). I have read a lot of guides online but they are either very mixed-up or they arn't deep enough. So if anyone could recommend something, I would be very thankful.
-thanks

 

Ran across this.. looks useful for beginners.
http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/index.htm


By practical aspect of electronics, what specifically do you mean? Practical design of electronics, practical troubleshooting? Practical analysis? Simulation? All the above?

I would recommend for a beginner to be weary of the electronics websites. You dont have a good feel for what is reliable information and what is garbage.. and unfortunately, there is alot of garbage out there.

You might want to start with a beginner book of some sorts. You can find these all over the place (Amazon.com etc..) read the reviews and so forth. Get one on building & troubleshooting as well.

I would get at least this much reading done before I started to build something - you'll appreciate & understand the project much better this way IMO.

 

Thank you. About practical I meant like maybe a series of projects that aren't too difficult and that can guide me through various tricks and knowledges. I've been looking on amazon but I was wondering whether you could recommend a specific book for beginners
Oh thanks also for the website

 

Hi,

You could try to get hold of the 'Forrest.M.Mimms III' book called 'Getting started in electronics'
It starts from the basics (electrons), and basic prinicples (Ohms law, capacitance, EMI, etc. etc) and includes information about components and their use, also includes many projects you can build quite easily.

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'Intellectuals solve problems. . . Geniuses prevent them.' . . . Albert Einstein

 

I would recommend doing an Amazon (or similar) search for beginning electronics books. You'd be amazed how much is out there, but a couple of books that I've seen highly recommended by many are "Tab Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics" by Randy Slone and "Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics" by Stand Gibilisco. I haven't actually read either of these books personally, but from what I've seen and heard, both of these seem halfway descent. I have read a different book by Randy Sloan which was pretty good in my opinion. The other nice thing is that if you aren't an electrical engineer or if you don't want to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks (USD), some of which are very good reference, these two books are fairly inexpensive and can get you started. After you get through those or something similar, a good recommendation for a more advanced book would be "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz. This book is viewed as the "bible" of electronics by many and is a good reference after you feel comfortable with the more elementary concepts. Good luck.

__________________
"If it sounds good, it IS good" - Duke Ellington

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." - Dr. Einstein

 

Thanks , Fingaz and Jtalent , I will take your advise and look at those books on Amazon. thanks again, for the advise
-p.reshetik

 

BTW

For the book that I recommended, you may want to look on ebay too. I checked and saw a couple available on there at reasonable prices. I looked on amazon and while there were a number available, some did seem rather expensive.

__________________
'Intellectuals solve problems. . . Geniuses prevent them.' . . . Albert Einstein

 

You could probably learn more using Wikipedia and Google.

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A really good internet site can be found at: www.faqs.org/docs/electric/index.htm

Or, www.play-hookey.com/ is good for digital electronics

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Hi I'm new to the site but would consider myself an intermediate skill level but I hadn't worked really seriously with anything in about four years so the other day I decided to buy the Electronics for Dummies book and it is really a good beginner book or a refresher for someone like me and I would definately recommend it, though I didn't like the fact that on a few things (mainly the parts I wanted to know about) it didn't go to indepth in explaining how it works such as transistors I really wanted a comprehensive breakdown of transistors and the npn and pnp but basically it stated that there are two different types and then went on which I thought was basically just scratching the surface. But the book was written with the beginner in mind because it trys to stick to the basics and not to overload you with extraneous info. Plus it comes with a neat reference sheet on the first page (big selling point for me because I have way to many formulas from calculus stored in my mind to remember many more)

 

Wow, AllVol thanks for those sites especially the first one, its really good! pescody I'll look at Electronics For Dummies in the library I'll check it out. thanks for the help.