Electrical engineering

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107891

by pencil • 16 years ago

6 20 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello HN,

Please suggest books which teaches all(fundamental) aspects of electrical engineering,books which teaches essential physics and math

RiderOfGiraffes4• 16 years ago

How old are you? What do you already know? What is 2/3+4/7?

Do you know what an electron is? Do you know its charge? What does V=IR mean?

What is sqrt(-1)? What are the solutions of x^2-3x+2=0, and how did you find them?

Without knowing things like this it's impossible to know whether to recommend Horowitz and Hill, or something like this: http://www.makingthings.com/teleo/products/documentation/tel...

Just try typing "Introduction to Electronics" into Google and see what you get.

Finally, Why? What do you want to accomplish - where are you trying to get to?

pencil2• 16 years ago

well..i'am 25 years old and i'am very much eager to learn,i'am pretty good at algebra but i've got no knowledge in physics nor the essential math needed to learn physics and essential physics needed to learn electrical engineering,i'am stuck

hga5• 16 years ago

Learn pre-calculus including trig, then proceed with calculus and classical mechanics and E&M. Then you'll have a solid foundation for serious EE.

RiderOfGiraffes4• 16 years ago

Where are you, and what local resources do you have?

This sort of stuff is enormously difficult to learn from books and unstructured on-line material. The problem, then, is that you need a properly structured course, with exercises and tests to help regulate your progress.

As others have said, you'll need algebra and trig, then you'll need some calculus. You need facility with word problems, and then some basic physics.

Here are some very, very simple basics to see where you are.

We can think of electricity as water flowing in a pipe. This analogy will get you a long way, but you will have to keep in mind that it is an analogy, and will sometimes be misleading. So ...

Loosely speaking, "Voltage" is the amount of "oomph" behind electrical current, it's like pressure. The more voltage you have, the more current you'll be able to push through a conductor.

However, a conductor will also resist the flow of current. In the simplest case, the amount of resistance remains constant over a wide range of conditions.

So, the formula is V=IR, (voltage drop across a resistor) is equal to (current flowing through it) times (value of the resistor).

The unit of voltage is the "volt"

The unit of current is the "amp" (short for "ampere")

The unit of resistance is the ohm.

So, suppose you have a resistor of 1K ohms (1000 ohms) and you put 2V (2 volts) across it. How much current will flow?

Suppose from A to B I have a resistor of 5K, and from B to C I have a resistor of 2K. If we have 5mA (5 milli-amps, 5/1000 amps) flowing from A to C, what is the total voltage drop from A to C?

Showing how you answer these will help us to provide suitable recommendations.

Finally, is there a local library? Is there a local college/university? Are you limited to on-line resources?

hga5• 16 years ago

Which books are right for you depends on what in particular you're interested in, and what your level of aptitude for this area is. For a sequence of topics, here's MIT's; I'm providing the course numbers, match those against the on-line versions at the OCW site: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm

  18.01 Single Variable Calculus
   8.01 Classical Mechanics
  18.02 Multivariable Calculus
   8.02 Electricity and Magnetism

   6.002 Circuits and Electronics
   6.003 Signals and Systems

That will get you a long ways.

rikthevik• 16 years ago

If I remember correctly, MIT doesn't distinguish between Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, which helps to product EEs who can program and CS majors who understand hardware.

rscott• 16 years ago

I'd be shocked at this. I'd understand not differentiating EE and CompE, but not CS.

hga5• 16 years ago

You were correct; the idea was that no MIT EECS graduate should be completely at sea if he had to do some programming or had some weird electrical problem to deal with (as a nearly total CS type, I can tell you the latter is extremely valuable):

The early '80s curriculum had a core of 6.001-4, in a word or phrase they were SICP, Kirchhoff's law, Laplace transforms, and low level architecture (gates and circuits, microcode and assembler).

Those were hard courses, each 15 units compared to the normal 12 for a typical course (one unit equals one nominal hour of work a week). I and others can attest that even if you were an experienced Lisp hacker 6.001 made you sweat blood.

That system is no more, the department panicked when the dot.com bust resulted in an unprecedented and permanent crash in undergraduate enrollment, which had been steady for decades.

So they terminated 6.001 with extreme prejudice and replaced the mandatory core with two new "fun and exciting" (but still hard) courses, 6.01 and 6.02. The first is robots programed with Python and the second is communications inspired by cell phone networks the last time I checked (I haven't looked hard at it).

After that there are different paths that can be taken by majors focusing on EE, CS or both, but almost all of the current student body goes for the later.

So MIT grads starting about now are a "new thing", a different "product"; obviously they will still have a fair understanding of both, but the guarantee for one of them is much lower. And you are of course you aren't going to see many who are in it for the money alone.

anactofgod• 16 years ago

Funny. Just yesterday I was flipping through MIT's OCW 6.xxx offerings, getting a refresher on EE and CS. There are a few holes in the on-line documentation, but it's a fantastic resource.

francoisdevlin• 16 years ago

Halliday & Resnick is still a great introduction to Physics, and it will be for quite some time.

jimmyjim• 16 years ago

A few gratis books I can recommend: http://openbookproject.net//electricCircuits/

They're the best that I have ever found. (It is a very sweet irony that they happen to be free).

edit: be sure to download the pdf versions. E.g. here's a link for book I, DC: http://openbookproject.net//electricCircuits/DC/DC.pdf (6 MB)

wal5hy2• 16 years ago

Having finished a degree in Electronics I would recommend the following two books:

* Engineering Maths by K. Stroud http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-6th-K-Stroud... to my mind there's no better maths book, very logical step by step approach to improving maths skills by building on previous knowledge

* The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hall http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/052... this is often referred to as the bible of electronics and acts as a great reference book (there is a circuit chip designer in my workplace who came from a physics background and taught himself electronics with this book)

RiderOfGiraffes4• 16 years ago

Horowitz and Hill, not Hall. It is a superb reference book, agreed, but it's not a good book to learn from, especially if you don't have the basics.

wal5hy2• 16 years ago

ah can't correct the spelling mistake now, thanks for spotting it.

A video I saw on a few years ago which was great for getting a fast paced over-view of how starting with digital electronics one can build a computer and write a program to work on it "From NAND to Tetris in 12 steps" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507

RiderOfGiraffes4• 16 years ago

I can recommend this site: http://www.khanacademy.org/

I suggest you find a video there that you're interested in and that you can't quite understand, then come back and ask a question. You said you were OK with algebra, so pre-calculus would be a good place to start.

bavcyc• 16 years ago

If you have a local community college, they should offer math courses that will teach what you need to know at a reasonable price. I'm not sure I would recommend any text to learn math on your own.

Mathematical Modeling of Physical Networks has an interesting approach to teaching Electrical Engineering. Not sure how it would work for someone new to EE.

ARRL might have some good sources of information. The ARRL Handbook is a good reference.

Electrical engineering

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