The Art of Electronics

This is the thoroughly revised and updated Second Edition of the hugely successful The Art of Electronics. Widely accepted as the single, authoritative text and reference on electronic circuit design, both analog and digital, this book has sold over 120,000 copies, and has been translated into eight languages. This book revolutionized the teaching of electronics by emphasizing the methods actually used by circuit designers--a combination of some basic laws, rules of thumb, and a large bag of tricks. The result is a largely nonmathematical treatment that encourages circuit intuition, brain storming, and simplified calculations of circuit values and performance. This completely new edition responds to the breakneck pace of change in electronics with totally rewritten chapters on microcomputers and microprocessors, substantially revised chapters on digital electronics, on op-amps and precision design, and on construction techniques. Every table has been revised, and many new ones have been added. The new Art of Electronics retains the feeling of informality and easy access that made the first edition so successful and popular.

Customer Review: Not useful for learning electronics on your own.

I've put a lot of effort into reading this book in an attempt to learn practical electronics. There are some very good points about this book. It covers a lot of the subject, from simple resistors to microcomputers to radio-frequency circuits and the authors are careful to explain how to make circuits that are resistant to component tolerance. I like this fail-safe approach.



On the other hand, from the point of view of someone learning this on his own (i.e. not in a classroom setting with a professor/T.A. to ask questions of) it leaves a lot to be desired. As I read this, time and time again I was reminded of that Far Side cartoon where the scientist has a blackboard full of formulas, with "THEN MAGIC HAPPENS" near the bottom and then the result. Too many steps are skipped when explaining the solution. A good example is the "error" reported by "larry f" in his review. This is not actually an error, but the explanation is missing some key insights that would have made the solution crystal clear. A couple of sentences such as "When the transistor shuts off, the emitter voltage will be -5V because of the voltage divider formed by the output resistor (connected to ground) and the emitter resistor (connected to -10V.) If the transistor is conducting, the current will increase through the emitter resistor, causing the emitter voltage to rise, thus the emitter voltage cannot ever go below -5V." It took me a long time of staring at the circuit to figure this out. This sort of omission is unfortunately the norm rather than the exception.



There are no answers to any of the many exercises (unless you buy the companion book for more money) so you can't check your progress to make sure you're understanding the concepts explained.



I think the very thing that makes this book a good reference lets it down as a teaching book. It overextends into too many areas. If the authors had written a simple analog electronics concepts book where things were examined in more detail, I think they'd have a winner. As it is, I don't recommend this book to someone who isn't assigned it in a college setting.





Customer Review: Beware of jargon!

This is a great and exhaustive text on the topic of circuit design. However it fails at the stated goal in the first sentence of the preface:



"This volume is intended as an electronic circuit design textbook and reference book; it begins at a level suitable for those with no previous exposure to electronics and carries the reader through to a reasonable degree of proficiency in electronic circuit design." (emphasis on "no previous exposure")



I came into this book with a strong background in solid-state physics, electrostatics and electrodynamics. I could explain to you the difference between a pnp and an npn junction and apply Kirchoff's laws to a basic circuit. I could explain to you the covariant formulation of Maxwell's equations. However I was already struggling by the second chapter.



Here are some sample sentences from the first two chapters of the book that are provided with no real context (i.e. they are assumed to be self-explanatory). If the intended meaning of any of these sentences is not immediately obvious to you, you will probably need a companion to this text:



"A word on language. You frequently hear things like "the resistance looking into the voltage divider," or the "the output sees a load of so-and-so many ohms," as if circuits had eyes. It's OK (in fact, it's a rather good way to keep straight which resistance you're talking about) to say what part of the circuit is doing the "looking.""



"The first case is caused by a square wave somewhere in the circuit coupling capacitively to the signal line you're looking at; that might indicate a missing resistor termination on your signal line. If not, you must either reduce the source resistance of the signal line or find a way to reduce capacitive coupling from the offending square wave."



"Choose the base resistor conservatively to get plenty of excess base current, especially when driving lamps, because of the reduced beta at low V. This is also a good idea for high-speed switching because of capacitive effects and reduced beta at very high frequencies."



"At first glance this circuit may appear useless, until you realize that the input impedance is much larger than the output impedance, as will be demonstrated shortly. This means that the circuit requires less power from the signal source to drive a given load than would be the case if the signal source were to drive the load directly. Or a signal of some internal impedance can now drive a load of comparable or even lower impedance without loss of amplitude. In other words, an emitter follower has current gain, even though it has no voltage gain."



I should emphasize that these first two chapters are focused on "Basic" circuits. The second chapter even adds insult to injury by ending with a section called "Self-Explanatory Circuits" in which you are presented with diagrams of "good" and "bad" circuits which are -- of course -- self-explanatory.
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