Principles of Electronic Instrumentation

This student-oriented text familiarizes undergraduates with the electronics involved in scientific instrumentation and control systems for use in research and end products. Suitable for the one- or two-semester courses, the text emphasizes electronics applications, rather than the physics or engineering of a device. This makes the material suitable for students who need a fundamental knowledge of electronics for the laboratory or workplace. Manufacturers' data sheets for nearly every common component are gathered in a convenient appendix, making learning and applications much easier and providing students with a valuable reference tool.

Customer Review: Do not buy this book!

Used this as the textbook for our basic college electronics course. It is riddled with major mistakes that made it impossible to trust any information. It is impossible to do many of the exercises without extensive knowledge not found in the book. The explanations are often difficult to follow. Definitely not for the novice. I would stay away from this book!

Customer Review: a very good book

I'm not sure why there are so many poor reviews of this book. I used the 2nd edition years ago and liked it - this 3rd edition continues to be very good.



It's approach is simple, clear & direct. The math is mostly algebra & trigonometry based with a bit of calculus thrown in here and there. This makes it very approachable especially if you don't have much experience with electronics. It's much clearer than Brophy ever was and more detailed than Faissler's book (Introduction to Modern Electronics).



I find many university level intro electronics books don't give enough motivation i.e. how you actually use the stuff. Electronics is, after all, an intensely PRACTICAL subject. This book throughout shows you where and how it relates to scientific applications. Chapter 7 on transducers and chapter 15 on noise are good intros to these areas in this regard.



dislikes: 30% (170/577 pages) of book is devoted to datasheets. Why I don't know. In every intro electronics course I've seen datasheets are rarely used. And just how likely is it that you'll need the ones in this book? - usually you'll need sheets for some oddball component in the lab portion of a course. These pages are a waste and should have been devoted to something else.



It should also have had end-of-chapter references for more advanced books. Glossary would have been nice too.



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if you want a more rigorous intro book use "Principles of Electronics: Analog and Digital" by Lloyd R. Fortney.



If you want more info on transducers, practical building and noise reduction techniques look at 1) "Electronics and Instrumentation for Scientists" by Malmstadt/Enke/Crouch, 2) "Measurement and Instrumentation Principles" 3rd Edition by Alan S. Morris, 3) "Signal Recovery from Noise in Electronic Instrumentation" by T.H. Wilmshurst, 4) "Electronic Instrument Handbook" by Clyde F. Coombs and 5) "Building Scientific Apparatus" by Moore/Davis/Coplan
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