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I would stay away from practical electronics for inventors. The book historically was chock full of really bad explanations and mistakes which brings into question the author’s knowledge and credentials. You don’t see that until you look at it from the professional side of things. To a new electronics person it looks credible. I can’t speak for later editions. The Art of Electronics is an excellent book but misunders…
Can you give some examples of the mistakes?
One of the fun things in electronics is when someone builds a small signal amplifier then wonders why the output is lower than calculated with zero understanding of source / load impedances. Because no one taught them about that.
[1]The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future https://a.co/d/g78jGlx
"Practical Electronics for Inventors" by Paul Scherz [0]. Not only does it have practical circuits it also has chapters on theory presented in such a way as to have me understand it. I think many of the books I read in the past shied away from complex math, linear algebra, etc. whereas PEfI uses them as needed. "The Art of Electronics", for example, I found to be absolutely abysmal. It's not an in depth book, it's pr…
It does not deal with practical topics like safety, system layout and grounding, board layout, reliability (heat, vibration, mechanical parts), connectors, testing, record-keeping, and so on. Some of these things get a superficial mention, to be sure. But not much practical advice.
For example there is a section of a few pages on transient [over]voltage suppressors, but it's just a catalog of a few different types of device with no real practical information on how to select and size them for different needs, test your design according to the standards, or the design tradeoffs.
I already know simplified treatments of the theory and I would have found a book on practical electronics to be useful.
Decades ago, like in the 1950's perhaps, the US Navy created a training manual about electricity and electronics for its personnel (a reasonable facsimile of laymen). This was used as the basis for a book called Basic Electricity . 1970: https://www.amazon.ca/Basic-Electricity-Bureau-Naval-Personn... 2002: https://www.amazon.ca/Handbook-Basic-Electricity-Naval-Perso... 2020: https://www.amazon.ca/Basic-Electricity-Bu…
Decades ago, like in the 1950's perhaps, the US Navy created a training manual about electricity and electronics for its personnel (a reasonable facsimile of laymen). This was used as the basis for a book called Basic Electricity . 1970: https://www.amazon.ca/Basic-Electricity-Bureau-Naval-Personn... 2002: https://www.amazon.ca/Handbook-Basic-Electricity-Naval-Perso... 2020: https://www.amazon.ca/Basic-Electricity-Bu…
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I've seen this site before, it looks really good but is there a downloadable/PDF version?
The entire content from this was open source and they built a community and advertising network around it and slowly devalued the content. I’m not sure what they did license wise with the original. The original source material is out there still but I can’t remember what it is called or where it is.
Decades ago, like in the 1950's perhaps, the US Navy created a training manual about electricity and electronics for its personnel (a reasonable facsimile of laymen). This was used as the basis for a book called Basic Electricity . 1970: https://www.amazon.ca/Basic-Electricity-Bureau-Naval-Personn... 2002: https://www.amazon.ca/Handbook-Basic-Electricity-Naval-Perso... 2020: https://www.amazon.ca/Basic-Electricity-Bu…
On the other hand, it is not a quick way to learn electronics, which is what I was interested in.
For that (and not the grid stuff) I’d recommend Charles Platt’s Make:Electronics. It’s great.
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Can you give some examples of the mistakes?
Comments about impedance and the BJT calculations were completely wrong. Also it suffers from having bits of information in little islands and no clue as to how to stick them together. One of the fun things in electronics is when someone builds a small signal amplifier then wonders why the output is lower than calculated with zero understanding of source / load impedances. Because no one taught them about that.
I found a list of (independent) errata for the 2nd edition [0], presumably because it was used in a class. I see one note about the "Rule 2" for transistors but, to me at least, it looks like the author just forgot a "not" in the sentence.
In general, the errata looks like what would exist for a textbook that was written by a person. It has mistakes, mostly typos but just a quick glance doesn't uncover some fundamental lack of knowledge from the authors part.
I'm no expert in electronics, so I don't have enough confidence to make a statement about the competency of Scherz, but your assessment seems hyperbolic.
"Practical Electronics for Inventors" by Paul Scherz [0]. Not only does it have practical circuits it also has chapters on theory presented in such a way as to have me understand it. I think many of the books I read in the past shied away from complex math, linear algebra, etc. whereas PEfI uses them as needed. "The Art of Electronics", for example, I found to be absolutely abysmal. It's not an in depth book, it's pr…
I've got the third edition and I'm not very impressed with the adjective "practical" in the title. It does not deal with practical topics like safety, system layout and grounding, board layout, reliability (heat, vibration, mechanical parts), connectors, testing, record-keeping, and so on. Some of these things get a superficial mention, to be sure. But not much practical advice. For example there is a section of a fe…
Whereas "for Inventors" seems a bit of sleight-of-hand marketing. Beginners in the field may also identify as and aspire to be inventors, making a more broadly-appealing title vs "for Beginners", though it may have been more accurate.