I highly recommend the All About Circuits textbook: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/
It starts from the very basics and builds up to quite complex circuits and their workings. It's an all-round great website, too.
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 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!
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.