The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015 • Hacker News Board

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#81

Post by gmt2027 » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #69

DanBC wrote: post #58

The Art of Electronics, combined with the Student Workbook are excellent books to teach yourself electronics. I guess today you'd use electronic simulations on a computer rather than real components on bread-boards with real test equipment. Perhaps some HNer is involved with this type of simulation software? I might be worth creating "labs" that can be used while reading tAoE?

I think the best analogy I can give for doing electronic labs online is the way cisco certification tests were provided in a very limited simulation presumably using regex's to see if you get it "right" (at least this is how it was a decade ago) vs getting time at an actual router command line. Its a different experience to do something real vs a simulation with pre-determined conclusions and situations. I'm struggli…

I studied the Cisco networking materials 5-10 years ago but never actually got round to taking the tests. Dynamips was a router hardware emulator for the 1700, 2600, 3600, 3700, and 7200 hardware platforms that booted up actual Cisco IOS images.

With GNS3, it was possible to set up complex network topologies of dynamips routers that would have cost thousands of dollars in real hardware without losing any of the realism as these were essentially virtualised routers.

I haven't kept up with the progress here but Cisco certification may not be the best example.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#82

Post by Steuard » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #79

Steuard wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's set aside equations and think about this conceptually. To be clear about the question here, I'm assuming that you have put a fixed charge onto each plate (equal and opposite) and then isolated them (so the charges remain constant). Here are the key ideas that are significant for this: * Assuming the separation between the plates is always small compared to their diameter/size, parallel plate capacitors give ris…

Thanks. This is starting to make sense. So I guess if you connect the two plates with a conductor after they were pulled apart, the increased energy would take the form of higher voltage?

That's right: the voltage in this case will be proportional to the separation between the plates, so if you discharged them across a light bulb it would (briefly!) glow much brighter if you pulled the plates apart first.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#83

Post by Steuard » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #78

Steuard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who regularly assigns the question you asked as homework (in an advanced physics course, mind you), let me put in a word of advice: don't think of what you're aiming for as "learn[ing] the formulas". In my experience, that mindset (which fits so very well in most high school science classes) is the single most common stumbling block for college-level physics students. Equations and formulas exist purely in…

Yes, that's an excellent point. So I guess the follow up question is how to learn the qualitative ideas behind electric fields? I've got a lot of inventions I've thought of related to static charges, and I'm trying to basically figure out why they wouldn't work. Maybe I can email a couple over to you and you can point me to the right concepts? (email in my profile)

Alas, the trouble is that it's tremendously hard to learn (or teach!) the qualitative ideas without also learning the equations. (The only counterexample to that I've ever seen in physics is Feynman's amazing little book "QED", which isn't at all what you need here.) So I've got nothin' for ya. (And while I do enjoy conversations about this sort of thing, obviously, I can't possibly sustain one with my job these days: I'm already going to regret the time I've spent on this one. But it was fun.)

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#84

Post by rotoole » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

One of the coolest experiences I had in grad school at MIT was taking professor Horowitz's Physics 123 class at Harvard, and reading this book cover to cover in a semester. Pain!

FYI, AoE covers BOTH analog and digital circuits in great detail.

You don't need to know how a computer works in that level of detail, in order to program it. But having started my education w/ high level languages like Java, C, C++, etc... it was fun to work back down to voltages, capacitors, buses, clocks, EPROM, transistors etc, and see how it all comes together end-to-end.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#85

Post by tdicola » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

Looks like Adafruit will have the book in its shop too: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2356 Can see some better pics of it there.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#86

Post by myth_buster » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #35

aswanson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened? Digital and moore's law took over. The microprocessor continues to absorb every function that, at one point, made economical sense to do in the analog domain. I share your lament, but reality instructs us to condition signals and supply voltage properly, and let the micro take it from there. It's only going to become more true as time moves on, so learn programming. Get very good at it.

Upvoted. I definitely agree that many erstwhile "analog" functions have joined the dark side. ;-) And I've been programming digital / analog systems since the early 80s. But I think that two challenges / opportunities remain for analog. The first is that advances in digital capabilities place new demands on analog. For instance, the possibility of higher sampling rates and bit depths requires us to go back and update…

My understanding is the high fidelity audio equipment are predominantly analog and does attract people of said skillset.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#87

Post by prestonbriggs » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

acd wrote: post #57

Own this book previous edition. What is good resources for learning electronics online? Are the online schools like Codeschool and Codeacademy with tutorials anywhere that are good that you can recommend?

I was impressed by https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#88

Post by throwaway000002 » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #21

throwaway000002 wrote: post #20

This is offtopic, but I need to ask this question and I fear I may loose the opportunity to field it to this audience of experts. I'm interested in two things and am wondering if this book, or something else, would be of use to me. Assume I have strong math background, and assume I understand the Maxwell equations. What book/resource provides a good understanding of the approximations (from first principles) needed t…

If you threw out an off topic post and actually put contact information in your profile, and I had something to add, I would email you and nobody here would care (although your off topic post might get downvoted into oblivion) but submitting an off topic post with no way to contact you is not very useful.

I've made changes to my profile, I hope they're useful. I also voted you up to counter the downvote. Sorry, but it's true, others could be interested in what you have to say.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#89

Post by rotoole » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 7:27 PM UTC

marai2 wrote: post #44

Can someone with no electronics background at all pick up this book? If not what would be a good prerequisite book?

Yes, but.... this is a tome. A bible. It covers everything. Its not a hold your hand, electronics for dummys, type of book. You will learn from it, and never stop learning from it. I would recommend getting the student handbook to go along w/ it, if you're truly starting from no electronics knowledge. The handbook has more examples and tutorial type stuff in it.

Re: The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

#90

Post by bronson » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

kefka wrote: post #61

bronson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. All the engineering books I use week-to-week are PDFs in a directory on my computer. The dead tree versions (including AoE) sit on the shelf unused. Make sure to click the "I want this title to be available as an ebook" link on that page.

And my jaded self would think the digital copy would be some DRM pile of crap. I've dealt with "school books-but online" before. I've seen things like 'book explodes after 180 days combined with 'can only print 10 pages'. I'll scan it myself or download it from someone who has. I'm just done with DRM. Never again.

Agree 100%, none of my engineering ebooks are DRMed. For some of them, I bought the text and then immediately pirated it off thepiratebay (rip) with a clear conscience.

Seriously, screw DRM.