quietmedic
New Member
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?