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Good book to REALLY understand electronics...not just extreme basics or endless math.?

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quietmedic

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Let me explain.. I've been an electronic enthusiast for a long time (more on the construction side), but have yet to find a good book or series that REALLY explains very specifically, WHY we build a circuit the way we do, why electronic circuits do what they do, component by component...like literally, "we have to bias a transistor because...." "we have to add an RC circuit at the output of the oscillator to make the output wave specifically do...." Most books I've seen either are ridiculously simple (block diagrams with no explanation of why, and "advanced" details such as calculating resistance in parallel), ridiculously math heavy and explanation-less ("here's an circuit with a resistor and a capacitor. now lets calculate thousands of examples of the voltage drops across them"...no mention of why we care or what that really means), or get directly into extremely complicated circuits and the wave calculus involved, again, with no explanation of why or how. Or, when talking about radio modulation, books give extreme basics "AM uses an envelope wave to modulate the amplitude of a carrier. That is how itcarries information. And this produces a sideband." without ever getting into how multiple voices can simultaneously hit a microphone and be successfully transduced, how both a voice's pitch AND volume are summed and transmitted as one modulating carrier, what a sideband is and why it exists, and why we care....you get the idea. It's either extreme basics or right into calculating stuff, with zero explanation.

I'm not an amateur, I know ohms law and don't need to review it a thousand times. I want to understand whats happening to waves and voltage as they pass through a resonant circuit, at each stage; why every single resistor, capacitor and transistor are present in a radio receiver, why we bias a transistor, how modulation really works with complex wave forms that aren't continuous sine waves....you get the idea. And I'd like it explained in Engish, not as a sinographic calculus equation (and yes, I do know both calculus and trig, as well as college-level education in multivariable calc and vector math/linear algebra, but that doesn't help me actually UNDERSTAND whats happening). I can get into the heavy calculations later. I feel like perhaps this is where a full graduate education in electronics engineering comes in, but unfortunately I can't do that now. But I want to understand....I just feel like there is this huge gap in the available information, either absurdly simplified or absurdly complicated, without a good bridge (besides for several years of graduate education of course).

Anyone have any recommendations?
 
I am sure everyone here will agree with me, without a doubt the best book is: Not math intensive, this book takes you from ohms law up to microcomputers. I only have the second edition which came out a very long time ago, so for the computer section was outdated. The third edition is supposed to be more relevant for today's technology.
51yW4eIDrNL._SX382_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 
Oh for RF electronics I really love the book RF circuit design By Chris Bowick.

411-ChEKAbL._AC_US160_.jpg
 
One more thing, I would order the books through Amazon or some other reputable source as there have been reports of counterfeit books being sold. So if the price seems to good to be true, it is likely a cheap knockoff. I heard these fakes would fall apart soon after you open them.
 
Those NEET courses are almost the same exact material taught to me when I went through Navy Electronic tech training. Although the material is good, I think it is woefully outdated for today's electronics, but since you can download it for free, it would not hurt to give it a read. Thanks for posting that, it took me back down memory lane...
 
I'll second the recommendation of the Horowitz & Hill book; The Art of Electronics is strongly oriented toward the practical, and avoids higher mathematics as much as possible.

The collections of application notes by the major semiconductor manufacturers are another good source of information. TI, Linear Technology, Maxim and Analog Devices all have a lot of useful material, much of it covering basic circuit design.
 
When I was a kid, My dad gave me his "Basic Electricity" and "Basic Electronics" from Van Valkenburg... The illustrations were brilliant in teaching the basic principles of each component!!

81044.jpg


I still have them somewhere!
 
Just to be clear, electronics is just basics and endless math. It's how you apply them that makes the difference.
 
Those NEET courses are almost the same exact material taught to me when I went through Navy Electronic tech training. Although the material is good, I think it is woefully outdated for today's electronics, but since you can download it for free, it would not hurt to give it a read. Thanks for posting that, it took me back down memory lane...

Some of the later modules on things like 'Synchros, Servos, and Gyros' are outdated but devices still operate on the same principles in today's electronics. I had the advantage of several years of college level theoretical electronics before I joined the Navy but I still learned a huge amount of practical 'get it running' type of information from NEETS and other Navy courses.
 
I am sure everyone here will agree with me, without a doubt the best book is: Not math intensive, this book takes you from ohms law up to microcomputers. I only have the second edition which came out a very long time ago, so for the computer section was outdated. The third edition is supposed to be more relevant for today's technology.
51yW4eIDrNL._SX382_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I just looked at the book now for the 1st time. It looks great.

This book should save you a lot of time it took for me as I got my 1st 10 yrs experience before this book was published in 1980 the hard way. with 80 hr weeks in 5 yrs.

I liked chapter 5.9 RRIO. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
in essense they wrote...
Rail-to-Rail Input & Output (RRIOs) Op Amps have desirable characteristics, but come at a hidden cost.
If you ignore the higher output impedance, crossover distortion and non-linear polarity inversions from over driving the input, you may be a tad disappointed.

I started by reading Design Corner magazine notes for the previous 20 years in my spare time in the Eng. Library. Now you can search the web.

But when I later started working in 1975, I had access to all the Mil-Std-Hdbk's for components and read all about the imperfections and characteristics of all capacitor , resistor, crystals, switches and magnetic parts, so I could appreciate the wise choices made by my mentors. We often built systems with up to 50 circuit cards without simulations or breadboarding ( except for new components).

One I remember designing and never breadboarded was a discrete UART before MOT released theirs in a single chip. A whole bunch ( ?30?40?) of CMOS gates and registers . But it worked. that took me about 2 days to create the schematic and an afternoon for someone to check my work.

Except don't ever bundle high speed logic wires together.
The look :woot:on my assembler's face when I explained that someone designed the backplane ( my project mgr) with two rows of cards and all the wirewrap had redone with random direct path pin-to-pin wiring with coax for the critical RF. She had done it to NASA / Aeroplane wiring standards, which looked pretty....err noisy.
 
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When I was a kid, My dad gave me his "Basic Electricity" and "Basic Electronics" from Van Valkenburg... The illustrations were brilliant in teaching the basic principles of each component!!

I still have them somewhere!

My first book(s) for electronics were these same Van Velkenburg et all books.

Very straightforward to understand, but be warned that they focus mostly in vacuum tube electronics!

The basic concepts are still valid.
 
Just to be clear, electronics is just basics and endless math. It's how you apply them that makes the difference.

Actually I disagree. A huge amount of my work is based on being able to read a circuit to know what it's supposed to do in order to either fix it or improve on its design or modify it to do some other function.

Of what I do need to do calculations on most of it is very simple stuff. Tobe honest I can't recall the last time I have ever had to use much of anything above upper-grade school math to solve a problem.

Sure there are many ways to make a simple problem more complex, and thus more likely to be calculated wrong, but if you know what you are looking at and what you want to do with it there is little reason justifiable reasons to do so. ;)
 
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My first book(s) for electronics were these same Van Velkenburg et all books.

Very straightforward to understand, but be warned that they focus mostly in vacuum tube electronics!

The basic concepts are still valid.
I just read Chapter 1 of your book. The illustrations are good and it was designed for teaching Navy techs after 1955.
https://ia802503.us.archive.org/21/...sic Electronics, Volumes 1-5, (1955)_text.pdf I did learn something about component properties with vacuum vs inert gas vs inert gas and Hg for rectifiers.

Here's an illustration on Ch2 . That's where I stopped. But for basic concepts it's free and a good review of analog and power principles
 
My first book(s) for electronics were these same Van Velkenburg et all books.

Very straightforward to understand, but be warned that they focus mostly in vacuum tube electronics!

The basic concepts are still valid.
My first book on electronics was the GE Transistor Manual, 7th Edition (1964), back when I was still playing with germanium transistors like the 2N107, 2N170, 2N1305, CK722 and the like. I still have that book. And I still refer to it, from time to time.

Ah, yes. Basic concepts, they're timeless.
 
Actually I disagree. A huge amount of my work is based on being able to read a circuit to know what it's supposed to do in order to either fix it or improve on its design or modify it to do some other function.

Of what I do need to do calculations on most of it is very simple stuff. Tobe honest I can't recall the last time I have ever had to use much of anything above upper-grade school math to solve a problem.

Sure there are many ways to make a simple problem more complex, and thus more likely to be calculated wrong, but if you know what you are looking at and what you want to do with it there is little reason justifiable reasons to do so. ;)

I think you misunderstood. What you just stated actually proves my point. Electronics is all basic concepts applied in different ways. "Endless math" just means you continually use math, I don't mean endlessly-complex math :p

If you learn all of the basics and have a basic understanding of math, then you can do just about any electronics problem out there. Sometimes it's a bit tricky to figure out how to apply the math and basic concepts, but it is doable.
 
I see. I guess I am used to having to deal with people who figure that the more complex they can make a simple operation look the better. :facepalm:

But then I have always thought that numbers were for countin' and letters were for writin' and neither was interchangeable without making yourself look like a dummy who either doesn't know what you are talking about or is making way too many assumptions with way too little details. :p
 
I see. I guess I am used to having to deal with people who figure that the more complex they can make a simple operation look the better. :facepalm:
Reminds me of:-
Billy Connolly said:
I must have missed the lesson when we did the 'x' times table....
Math does get too complicated.... Our old director used to use resistor values close to voltages... ie:- two 3k9 resistors in an 8v system gave 4v... 2k7 and 4k7 gave him 5v (ish)... Nice and easy!
 
Ian; that is a good shortcut that I also use to calculate resistor dividers.

But to the original poster: you must be proficient in at least algebra, to properly calculate series/parallel resistors capacitors and inductors. You should be able to calculate basic time constants (R-C being the most common). You should be able to calculate the resonant frequency of an L-C circuit. Calculate from decibels to ratios.
And other similar stuff.
 
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