It starts from the very basics and builds up to quite complex circuits and their workings. It's an all-round great website, too.
And it's free!
It may be a great book for those who already have some grounding in the topic.
Exactly as you said, because I have already had some exposure to physics and to kind of modular systems (I am mathematician working as a developer) this was perfect resource for me.
Different people with different backgrounds learn in different ways and from different types of resources. It is wise to understand there is no single resource that is going to be best for everybody.
So you're saying they're correct that it's not a good book for a learner without some exposure to the fundamentals. But what's the disparagement you're referring to?
I believe if you have never been exposed to engineering or another discipline that deals with complex systems (like designing software or mechanical systems) you have to learn to build systems from smaller components. This is where many beginners fail. Even though they can sort of understand what parts do they can't put them together because they don't think in systems. In that case you need something else than AoE.
On the other hand, if you have built complex things in another discipline you may find yourself very at home with AoE with no previous exposure to electronics. That's because you already know how to build systems from lego bricks, now you just need to learn new kinds of bricks and rules to put them together.
A good place to start is to get one of the small Elenco electronics kits. The ones with a solderless breadboard. That will get you the basics. With a solderless breadboard, you can always buy and add more components. Much hobbyist electronics is done on solderless breadboards, especially Arduino stuff.
Once you understand E=IR and W=EI, you can size most components. Beyond that, use LTSpice.
Then I went to college.
When I looked at it as a more mature engineer, I found it imprecise, sloppy, and also not very helpful. It doesn't embody good design practice, give a proper theoretical basis, and the choice of topics is random.
Many people love it, but I hate it.
It covers a lot. On the mechanical side it only covers actuators and control systems.
Flipping through, I think the thyrister treatment is a bit weak, and I would ideally like to see more in terms of comm-sys, (like how NTSC works for analog/radio TV), but this looks solid.
TIL about a nice reference.
Thank you!
Still somewhat surprising to me, this kind of simulation actually does help. It turns out that you actually do pick up a lot of intuitive feel that can serve well in an industrial context. I guess no matter how much theory you study on, it's still really insightful to just blow up some circuits. ;-)
Note that Electrical age currently works with older versions of minecraft (1.7) , though a rewrite is in the works.
(Many fail and are put off to learning the subject whenthere is no person they personally know to guide them through speed bumps)
All the stuff you're learning is in a way directly useful, whereas try to get a steam turbine IRL for learning at home...
My biggest issue is how to depict this in a format that I can share over Skype without putting in 80 hours of work. I might go with a series of pencil drawings and scan them in.
Are any of the suggested materials particularly suitable for this kind of presentation? This is intended to be a 20 minute or so presentation so I'm really just providing highlights. Points I want to get across include:
- Resistance anywhere in the circuit will cause problems. (e.g. bad ground connection.)
- Bad starting can be the result of a insufficient battery charge.
- Bad starting can be the result of high battery internal resistance.
- Bad starting can be the result of high resistance in the circuit.
- Operating with loads (e.g auxiliary lights and heated vest) that draw slightly more power than the charging system delivers can work for hours until the battery is discharged and the charging system no longer supports the loads. (DAMHIK!)
Thanks!
edit:formatting
Or you could try streaming on Twitch (so that people can ask you questions as you explain stuff).
I think it's very important to teach people that moving electric charges, represented by current, result in magnetic forces, and that these magnetic forces are what cause motors to turn. And an alternator or generator reverses the relation by spinning a magnetic field to generate current, which is why it charges a battery.
Is that true? Low temperatures directly affect the maximum output current of the battery, but I don't think engine tolerances are such that the engine starts to effectively seize up below freezing.
The pressure analogy is a really good one; the problem is a lot of people don't understand water pressure any better than they understand electricity.
[0]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/electric-charge-...
[1]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/circuits-topic
[2]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/electrical-engineering
Context: My biggest gripe with traditional education is lack of context for why a principle is important or useful. Not a problem when you are focused on a project.
Practicality: The practical aspects of theory are usually limited to core principles and help you see through the fog of all the details.
Narrative: Bringing many topics together in a project narrative give a linear path through the related principles which is less overwhelming.
https://hackaday.com articles, in my experience, have been a good jumping off point and often have solid links for better understanding.
A weakness of this approach is that it ignores the mathematical techniques to solving some of the problems. I doubt you will learn how to analyze circuits with differential equations or phasor analysis on a hobby site. That said, I rarely use these tools outside of an academic setting.
I'm sure someone will recommend The Art of Electronics. Its a great resource once you have the basics under your belt, but hard to use as a learning tool without prior knowledge. It touches on a lot of details by presenting a circuit and summarizing key points about its operation.
Once you have a handle on the basics I highly recommend playing with some circuits in a simulator. LTSpice is free and very high quality. There are other online options too.
You can experiment on hardware relatively safely if you stay away from high voltages and currents (avoid mains power and car batteries, always use circuit protection such as fuses). You will be frustrated if you have no test equipment though, a multimeter is a must-have.
The difference is like being physicist and mechanic. Do you want to be physicist and understand electricity as a phenomena or do you want to be an engineer and use it for something useful. Believe me, there is less overlap than you think.
One good resource I have found is series of articles on http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html which mixes a little bit of both worlds.
Have fun!
The divide you're talking about exists in both electrical and electronic engineering, if they are to be considered separate disciplines: in electronic engineering you have both the solid state physics required to understand semiconductor devices, and the layers of abstraction used to design analogue circuitry; in electrical engineering you have all the theory of electromagnetism, and the layers of abstraction used to design electrical machines.
The divide you're referring to is real, but it definitely isn't the electrical/electronic divide.
Think this way: do you need to understand how a complex IC part works? No, you don't. You read the manual and learn that if you put something on particular inputs you will get something on outputs. You leave designing the internals to others. You take parts other people built and solder them to long pieces to copper glued to PCBs.
That's really most of electronics.
You need to know a little bit of physics. You need to appreciate some phenomena like losses, noises, you need to know what happens at high frequencies, maybe you want to understand how heat is conducted away from your parts, etc. You need to know couple extremely simple formulae and laws (laughably simple to any physicist interested in the matter). Other than that your parts function as tiny little lego bricks that are transfer functions to affect how your circuit works.
This is just factually inaccurate; electronics is the field which relates to control/emission of electrons.
If you build a "useful circuit" which does not use any active components, you aren't doing electronics.
If you're applying solid state physics to model transistor behaviour, you're doing electronics.
The terminology has absolutely nothing to do with levels of abstraction.
I understand what you're saying, and agree that there is a broad range of levels of abstraction within electronics, but the division in abstraction is unrelated to the division between electrical and electronic engineering.
It is like calling computer scientist experts in software development. No, knowledge of algorithms is far, far from software development which is also about human interaction, project organization, and many, many other things.
Go google "electronics definition":
>noun
>the branch of physics _and technology_ concerned with the design of circuits using transistors and microchips, and with the behaviour and movement of electrons in a semiconductor, conductor, vacuum, or gas.
So no, it is not obviously just about control/emission of electrons.
Yep; it is explicitly is talking about either active devices or literally cases where the topic of focus is control/behaviour of electrons.
> If you are physicist you might envision electronics as control of emission of electrons. If you are an actual engineer you will have very different definition and understanding of what electronics is.
It has nothing to do with the level of abstraction at which you're working, which is my entire point; whilst an engineer may very well not be considering the behaviour of electrons in day to day work, if she is doing electronics, she is working with devices/technologies which involve the control/emission of electrons. If she is working on, for example, an induction machine, she is not doing electronics.
Again, I'm not contesting that people work at different levels of abstraction within a field, just pointing out that the term "electronics" as opposed to "study of electricity" has absolutely nothing to do with abstraction; it refers specifically to whether <active devices/transistors/semiconductors/control and behaviour of electrons/whatever you want to call it> is involved.
Electronics engineers don't go wielding equations to build circuits (well, except maybe Ohm's Law) but rather rely on intuitive models they have in their brains of what components do when put in a specific place in the circuits.
This is necessary shortcut because otherwise even simple circuit can become extremely difficult to understand if you start from first principles.
I would respectfully disagree with this assertion.
I'm pretty sure my colleagues who are designing novel FinFET transistors for low noise applications are "doing electronics", and I'm also pretty certain that they're considering the underlying semi-conductor physics in some pretty serious depth; they're definitely not trying to work with "as little depth as [they] can get away with".
Electronics as a discipline encompasses people working at many levels of abstraction, including those working at a very low level. I think transistor designers would be very amused (or perhaps offended?) if you were to claim that they weren't doing "proper electronics" because they're actually thinking about things in depth in a very analytic way.
How comfortable are you with "lies for children" oversimplifications of things that are extremely complicated but mostly irrelevant except in edge cases? (This phrase sounds perjorative but isn't, most of the time you don't need the complicated version and it actively impairs understanding what's going on. But it can be the only way to properly answer some questions like "what is electricity?")
I've occasionally considered writing my own, based on answering questions at electronics stackexchange, e.g. https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/245610/is-vo... / https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/272694/how-d... ; probably I would target explaining how the electron is a big source of "lies to children", and mostly an irrelevant distraction for beginner/intermediate work.
If you want a large book, The Art Of Electronics is the undisputed classic.
As an example of my reasoning. AoE and the Arduino starter kit cost roughly the same in my country. They are of course not comparable, but I'd would definitely recommend the latter to someone completely new to electronics, exactly because the latter gives the tools for experimenting.
Articles on Electricity http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html
Great essays on understanding electricity, current, voltage, capacitors, transistors, batteries, static electricity etc etc, and popular misconceptions.
One of my favorites: http://amasci.com/amateur/whygnd.html
There is also one about different types of plugs in Europe and UK which I cannot find
[0] https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyQSN7X0ro2314mKyUiOILa...
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html
I believe one can't appreciate the whole subject enough without knowing that the electromagnetic forces are how the atoms "work", also producing "chemistry" and everything we see.
To paraphrase Feynman, the electromagnetic forces also keep you from falling down through the floor.
For the start:
"If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied."
Just another resource that may help! You'll have no shortage of perspectives and approaches from the links here.
All of the water analogies were unhelpful for me. I did better just doing the math and seeing the result.
Someone else mentioned MITx. I did that and it was revolutionary. I also have a pretty good book called Practical Electronics for Inventors.
This is a great observation. I've often thought that teaching Ohms law as I=V/R would lead to less confusion. Similarly, in intro physics why is mass acceleration introduced as f=ma? Wouldn't a=f/m have a clearer meaning?
Same here, I just had to come to accept that there were orthogonal dimensions/measurements. It didn't matter if I understood them intuitively, as long as I worked with them orthogonally and in strict accordance with the basic equations.
IIRC Mehdi admitted on reddit that the one time he really screwed up and was genuinely scared was when the Jacob's Ladder fell on him[0].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr_CZLgMkHeWFl1uf5yR2...
= For straight up electric concepts, I’d look at the Georgia Institute of Technology stuff on Coursera. “Introduction to Engineering Mechanics” and “Linear Circuits 1” were helpful.
They've moved everything around since I did it, but I think this is the one: https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.002x_6x+1T2...
[Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)]((https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23358380)). It explains electricity without any technical jargon. Pretty nice first read. His atomic model is outdated, but that doesn't seem to interfere with anything. After reading the first initial letters, you might have a greater motivation to dive into more complicated texts.
My problem with learning electronics, and, to a lesser extent, electricity, was that most of the guides gave an 'ad-hoc' approach, giving "rules of thumb", recipes, etc. without really going into the reasons for it. They would start off with an (imo) overly technical explanation of quantum effects, then jump the more fundamental Ohm's law, etc., then jump into all the tips-n-tricks of circuit design.
For me, the two major factors to learning electronics were getting enough math sophistication that I could do calculus and linear algebra and being able to program (microcontrollers). The calculus and linear algebra gives tools for the 'passive' analysis and once you realize that most 'practical' electronics nowadays are basically routing power and signal, being able to program is the "meat" of it.
After understanding how to do passive steady-state circuit analysis, I briefly looked at how to do non-passive simulation (transistors, etc.) just to see how it was done (aka, learned how SPICE et. all do it).
Anyway, I found the "Practical Electronics for Inventors" book to be one of the few books that was practical from the outset and actually went into the theory, even if only briefly, without assuming I would get frightened by complex numbers.
There's obviously a path that doesn't involve calculus, linear algebra and programming, because people do it and have been doing it for many years, but these were the tools that helped me understand.
I would also recommend not doing this in the abstract. Arduino's [1] are, in my opinion, one of the better places to start. You can get an LED blinking within 5 minutes of onboxing. Adafruit [2] has many tutorial but they're more focused on using pre-built modules and I guess programming, to a lesser extent, than underlying theory.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt...
https://www.bournetoinvent.com/projects/7-SC-Torch/pages/1_L...
(please excuse the crappy JS)
On another note, I would avoid the water in pipes analogy, as it fails pretty quickly. Electricity is hard to understand because you can't see its effects clearly, but at the end of the day it is caused by an electromagnetic field. Other fields such as gravitational fields, we tend to have a much more intuitive understanding of. Look for explanations that draw parallels between gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields.
When you get to active (transistors, diodes etc) devices don't spend much time trying to figure out the physics of these things just use the equations and keep it simple. Just as when you're cooking eggs in the morning it doesn't help much to understand prospecting, mining and metallurgy to use the frying pan.
Take a look and let me know what you think.
If you get to wanting to experiment with faster circuits, you can ditch breadboards and their parasitics for Manhattan style construction[1] and be able to build _much_ faster circuits with better success. Or you can fall down another rabbit hole, learning how to design your own PCBs. With PCB services becoming mainstream nowadays, you can learn a tool such as KiCad (free software) and send out your gerbers to be manufactured for cheap.
[1]: http://www.sdmakersguild.org/the-art-of-manhattan-style-circ...
I knew nothing before starting the book and knew enough by about halfway through to start pursuing my own projects.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everycircu...
The default example here is the LCR-circuit which to understand mathematically requires a bit of work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RLC_circuit
What actually got me there was the book „Code“ by Charles Petzold[2] which traces the development from early circuitry like light bulbs and telegraph wires to modern digital logic. I found that after being introduced to these concepts, learning about the fundamental physics was much more accessible since it was framed in the context of contemporary application.
1: https://youtu.be/LnzuMJLZRdU
2: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...
don't forget googles and gloves
https://www.udemy.com/course/analog-electronics-robotics-lea...
It's from the developer of AFL and the Guerilla Guide to CNC. Check out the root domain for lots more interesting stuff.
Guess I should add that it covers the basics of electricity and the basics of electronics.
Radio https://archive.org/details/TM11-666/page/n5/mode/2up
Map Reading https://archive.org/details/FM21-26_201211
Carpentry https://archive.org/details/FM5-426/page/n17/mode/2up
Welding https://archive.org/details/TM9-237/page/n5/mode/2up
Or a shorter alternative: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-electricity-grid-works
One example is capacitor banks, which it spent a few pages on. I'm told that they're more beneficial the closer to an inductive load they're installed, but I was never told why, or given any tools to figure it out why for myself. There's not even a citation.
After reading this book I have a better understanding of how much of the grid I don't understand, but I don't feel like there's any part I understand particularly better.
https://www.amazon.com/Electricity-One-Seven-Harry-Mileaf/dp...
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...
If you want to try and learn some basics, and then try apply them, both AoE (mentioned already by pjc50) and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" are good choices.
The latter is much more affordable than AoE.
Still tricky to apply it to AC though.
You can still find them on ebay, or similar kits if you look around.
It sometimes helps me understand better if I get some context on things, how people were thinking before it was discovered, what kinds of hyptothesis and experiments led to another and such.
1 watt = 1 volt times 1 amp. So a watt is a volt-amp.
Similarly to how 1 joule is a newton-meter per second.
When you work with units of measure symbolically in this way, you don't need to worry about not having an intuitive grasp of a joule or a newton.
https://www.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Electricity-Kazuhiro-Fuji...
The whole Manga Guide to X series is great.
https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/category/basic-ele...
His mailing list is high quality but also high volume
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlJoXxlSFE&list=PLyQSN7X0ro...
Obviously I shouldn't plug my own creations directly into the wall. Is it safe to use a low voltage "power brick"? Will any do, or do I need an especially robust one just in case?
Oh man I have some retrocomputing equipment I really want to play with but I'm a little worried as there's a huge capacitor, some of the wires coming off the power supply manual are visibly old and to add to it, one of the first pages in the maintenance manual is a CPR guide.
They're also typically really cheap, which can be an advantage if you fry one. Or two. Or ten. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. :-)
Seriously though, if you have any kind of thrift store, surplus store, or something of that nature near you, you can often pick up random wall warts for next to nothing.
Keep in mind though, that while these voltages are generally below the threshold required to conduct through skin, and represent little shock hazard, pretty much any electrical system can be hazardous in other ways.
In particular, you can create a fire hazard even with pretty low voltages, if the resistance is low enough and your power supply is capable of providing enough current. Likewise for sparks: if, FSM forbid, you happen to have some explosive vapors around (and even a bottle of fingernail polish remover can be a source of explosive vapors), a small spark can start a fire.
My point isn't to try to scare you off, but rather to say that you always need to be cautious, pay attention to what you're doing, and keep safety in mind, even when playing with low voltages.
However, because of the variety of projects you'll do, to use a wall power source you'll need either a variety of adapters of different voltages, or one of those expensive multi-voltage power adapters, or a proper bench power supply.
So, yes, one of those 5V or 9V wall adapters is perfectly fine to use. You simply buy the female portion of the adapter and connect it to your circuit. However, if you do end up exploring multiple projects early on, using batteries will reduce the amount of new expensive gear you need to buy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUUeGianTKM
Its sn excellent 3 hour documentary on how electricity was discovered.
These are important questions.
Great resource, which dispels a lot of myths and misused terminology in many other traditional explanations. Fun read!
For example I did a search for ohm's law class 11 and that search finds pages of introductory videos on that topic.
I'd love something like shenzhen io but with more emphasis on circuits than signals
YouTube guy. Funny and does electronics basics.
This is a seriously good course. I've been interested in electronics on and off since I was a kid. I tried learning from various Radio Shack books, but never got very far. I tried some introductory classes at Caltech, and never got very far. Tried "The Art of Electronics" and it just didn't work.
That MITx course worked.
That said, it does get fairly mathematical...circuits involving inductance and capacitance are going to be analyzed using differential equations so if you have never had any exposure to such things it could be rough going.
If you've been through college calculus you should be fine, even if (like me) you've forgotten most of it. They have some refresher material that should bring enough back to get through it.
Here's what you learn in part 1:
• How to design and analyze circuits using the node method, superposition, and the Thevenin method
• How to employ lumped circuit models and abstraction to simplify circuit analysis
• How to use intuition to solve circuits
• Construction of simple digital gates using MOSFET transistors
• Measurement of circuit variables using tools such as virtual oscilloscopes, virtual multimeters, and virtual signal generators
Part 2 teaches:
• How to build amplifiers using MOSFETs
• How to use intuition to describe the approximate time and frequency behavior of first-order circuits containing energy storage elements like capacitors and inductors
• The relationship between the mathematical representation of first-order circuit behavior and corresponding real-life effects
• How to improve the speed of digital circuits
• Measurement of circuit variables using tools such as virtual oscilloscopes, virtual multimeters, and virtual signal generators
• How to compare the measurements with the behavior predicted by mathematical models and explain the discrepancies
Part 3:
• How to construct and analyze filters using capacitors and inductors
• How to use intuition to describe the approximate time and frequency behavior of second-order circuits containing energy storage elements (capacitors and inductors)
• The relationship between the mathematical representation of first-order circuit behavior and corresponding real-life effects
• Circuits applications using op-amps
• Measurement of circuit variables using tools such as virtual oscilloscopes, virtual multimeters, and virtual signal generators
• How to compare the measurements with the behavior predicted by mathematical models and explain the discrepancies
The first course is 4 weeks:
Week 1: From physics to electrical engineering; lumped abstraction, KVL, KCL, intuitive simplification techniques, nodal analysis
Week 2: Linearity, superposition, Thevenin & Norton methods, digital abstraction, digital logic, combinational gates
Week 3: MOSFET switch, MOSFET switch models, nonlinear resistors, nonlinear networks
Week 4: Small signal analysis, small signal circuit model, dependent sources
The second course is also 4 weeks:
Week 1: Amplifiers, MOSFET large signal analysis, MOSFET small signal analysis
Week 2: Capacitors, first-order RC circuits
Week 3: Inductors, first-order step response, first-order circuit analysis, impulses, digital circuit speed
Week 4: Impulse, step, ramp superposition, digital memory, state, ZIR, ZSR
The third is 6 weeks:
Week 1: Second-order circuits, damping in second-order systems
Week 2: Sinusoidal steady state analysis, frequency response, frequency response plots, impedance methods
Week 3: Filters, quality factor, time and frequency domain responses
Week 4: Op-amp abstraction, negative feedback, Op-amp amplifiers, Op-amp filters and other circuits
Week 5: Stability, positive feedback, oscillators, energy and power
Week 6: CMOS digital logic, breaking, the abstraction barrier
[1] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-and-electronics-1-basic-...
[2] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-and-electronics-2-amplif...
[3] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-and-electronics-3-applic...
For really basic things: maxewels equations, ohms law, and the idea that in a closed system potential and kinetic energy are constant. Just grab a university level physics book.
V=IR (ohms law) gives you most of what you need for DC circuits. Remember that power is volts x amps so you can exchange one for the other (for free in an ideal world.)
Alternatively if you want a practical understanding here’s what I learned from as a kid: forest mim’s book (it’s wrong in some ways but it works) the art of electronics (this has anything you could want to know and is well organized and written, like an O’Reilly book for electronics in general) and this really old book I found in a used book store titled “introduction to pulse circuits.”
That said I really like your suggestion of starting with basic mechanics and thermodynamics. "Resistors get hot, motors do work, and capaciductors are like springs" goes a long way to tie everything else together