Learn electricity and electronics fundamentals without taking a formal course

https://simonmonk.org/tyee7

by teleforce • 1 year ago

407 120 1 year ago

simonmonk.org

YZF5• 1 year ago

I can also highly recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill.

Syzygies• 1 year ago

That's what I learned from!

analog31• 1 year ago

I learned from the 1st edition, in 1984. It's worth noting that the book was actually written for scientists rather than engineers. I was a math and physics major. By a long standing tradition, an electronics course is a standard part of the undergrad physics curriculum.

My dad had "Electronics for Scientists" by Malmstadt et al., 1962. His employer put a bunch of scientists through an electronics course.

The contrast was pretty remarkable. It's all about vacuum tubes, with some introduction of transistors. The 1st edition of AoE had a reasonable amount of material on digital circuits for back then, but I imagine a similar contrast between 1984 and today.

The span of 40+ years has certainly changed how I do electronics.

WalterBright• 1 year ago

After The Cat passed, I found a book under her bed entitled "Electronics for Cats". I wonder what she had been plotting.

masto• 1 year ago

I found it impenetrable.

BenFranklin100• 1 year ago

Horowitz and Hill is the canonical recommendation for novices, and a text that almost no novice actually learns from.

YZF5• 1 year ago

I already knew something by the time I read it so that must have helped. I guess you do need a certain maturity level (in the subject) to get started but once you have it (maybe from somewhere else) I think it's great.

It reminds me of my first time trying to learn assembly language when I was in my early teens. I just could not make any sense of it. I knew a little bit of PASCAL and BASIC at the time and that was just alien territory. When I came back a few years later after some exposure then it all came together.

Try going back to the book ;)

vivzkestrel3• 1 year ago

i don't recommend this book at all. I know nothing about electronics. Think blank slate and this book went straight over my head. I caught it from the comments of one such post on HN

_moof• 1 year ago

Try pairing it with the companion "Learning the Art of Electronics." It's a hands-on lab workbook that complements the main book. It's very practical.

rramadass6• 1 year ago

AoE is not meant for people who are starting from zero. Pair it with some other "popular electronics" kind of books and it will start making better sense. One recommendation is Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk. For theory see Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits by Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey Lang.

YZF5• 1 year ago

I can see how that would happen. When I first read the book I was definitely not a blank slate. But it's still a good recommendation for those with a little bit of knowledge who want a deeper understanding. At least it was for me. You'll only get so far without knowing the things in the book which are also introductory in nature.

If you don't know Ohm's law. You don't know what a resistor is. You've never built a simple circuit. Then this book may not be for you. Or it may if you're willing to put in the effort.

megadata3• 1 year ago

That's an awful recommendation for an entry level electronics.

belter4• 1 year ago

That is like recommending a Knuth book for somebody wanting to learn Python.

OJFord3• 1 year ago

'electronics fundamentals' is equivalent to 'python'?

Surely this is like recommending a Knuth book (TAoCP?) to someone wanting to learn 'CS fundamentals', which.. sure?

e28eta2• 1 year ago

I really liked Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition, by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk.

I’m definitely interested in more electronics books for self study though.

rramadass6• 1 year ago

Designing Embedded Hardware: Create New Computers and Devices by John Catsoulis.

Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems by Jerry Twomey.

There are lots more with varying levels of basics/advanced but the above two are what came to my mind immediately for self study.

e28eta2• 1 year ago

Thanks!

ohgr3• 1 year ago

It’s a fucking awful book. Sorry. It’s just terrible. It looks good but it’s mostly useless.

000ooo000• 1 year ago

Pointless comment without some detail.

osigurdson• 1 year ago

"Don't bother learning anything. AI will do all of this grunt work soon. You will be free to do what you really want"

It kind of misses the point that many people actually want to know how things work and how to design and build things. This isn't going to go away.

jambutters• 1 year ago

Is this a random quote? Or something said on the page or this thread?

Jtsummers2• 1 year ago

It seems to be random as neither the discussion here nor the submitted page has anything like it to either be a quote or paraphrasing of something.

colesantiago• 1 year ago

there will be new jobs.

connectsnk• 1 year ago

I have been wanting a tutorial like this. Thanks

calibas2• 1 year ago

[removed]

frontfor• 1 year ago

What are you trying to convey?

calibas2• 1 year ago

Is it not obvious? The number of protons is the atomic number. If "c" was the answer, ions couldn't exist.

rabidvermin• 1 year ago

Answers: 1. a

lowdest• 1 year ago

The answer key to the first quiz says "1. a"

tayo42• 1 year ago

I keep putting off looking for something along his topic. Mostly becasue I want to learn to repair electronics. I have audio equipment that doesn't work right that I'm pretty sure just needs a small repair, but I'm stuck thinking about throwing it away becasue idk how to fix it. Pro repairs cost almost as much as what I have for some of them.

VTimofeenko• 1 year ago

I was in the same boat. Had a pair of speakers go bad about a month ago, opened em up, saw a bunch of bulged capacitors. Tried my hand at replacing them, wasted way too much time doing it; in the end I didn't fix them. I either burnt something while desoldering or something else was borked.

I bought a new pair, but I walked away from it with more or less of a warm and fuzzy feeling that I did what I could. And a semi-decent soldering station, so next time this happens I will try again.

neuroelectron2• 1 year ago

Will I finally understand transistors?

njstraub608• 1 year ago

Honestly just spend a few hours talking to Claude about them, I had a few breakthrough moments doing that.

geekodour• 1 year ago

put this prompt and share the response:

You summarize the past convestion in this thread. - Start with a overall summary in a single paragraph - Then show a bullet pointed list of the most interesting illustrative quotes from the piece - Then a bullet point list of the most unusual ideas - provide a longer summary that covers points not included already - Finally, Step by step/phase by phase understanding of the ideas discussed above

whartung• 1 year ago

I actually have the 3rd edition of this book, and, yea I think it explained transistors pretty well.

Mind, I don’t remember any of it, I never applied it, but at the time, it explained it to me.

blackguardx2• 1 year ago

What is the most challenging concept about transistors? I think the classic valve analogy (AKA Art of Electronics "Transistor Man") works to a large extent. To fully understand the physics requires a lot more but in between, there are relatively simple equations that describe the main current flow as related to the control terminal's voltage or current depending on the transistor type.

To go from single transistor to multi-transistor circuits was a big leap for me, but most of it is understanding how particular subcircuits work and recognizing them as blocks of a larger circuit.

bee_rider• 1 year ago

BJTs were a real pain. Uncooperative exponentials fighting each other, or something like that, if I haven’t managed to forget successfully…

trod12345• 1 year ago

The classic Voltage as Water in a pipe, or check valve comparison are destructive and misleading analogies that do not demonstrate the behavior except in isolation, and that narrow scope of isolation isn't provided leading towards purposeful struggle.

The ideas and practices of the gnostics in general are just stupid.

If you can't explain how a PN junction, or its composites actually function simply, you don't understand what you are talking about. As simply but not more simply than necessary, without using math.

weard_beard6• 1 year ago

The function can be understood as a traffic cop at the intersection of a major road and a small 1 lane road.

He has instructions to only let cars down the major road if cars also come down the small road.

When a small trickle of cars come down the small road the intersection can act like a dimmer switch. It can also take a very small signal, and with a secondary more powerful input, amplify it.

But if you quickly alternate between no cars and lots of cars that dimmer switch acts like a toggle switch giving you 1s and 0s.

The physics is basically, when you sandwich two elements in close proximity that give up their electrons in a very specific way you get the macro phenomenon described above.

The reason the elements give up electrons this way also happens to be at the heart of a lot of cool concepts of math and is a demonstrable proof of some physics that used to be just theory. Learning the physics of transistors can teach you concepts that tie together the history of science from Ancient Greece to Quantum physics.

DrFalkyn• 1 year ago

“Amplification” has to be one the most misunderstood concepts In electronics

No signal is really “boosted” by some weird process. What happens is a very powerful DC signal (i.e constant) is selectively allowed through, being mediated by the input signal. The “volume knob” on a power amp works by ATTENUATING that constant DC signal prior to “amplification”

mindslight3• 1 year ago

Oh, I guess those intersections with sensor controlled lights for a tiny side road are just JFETs. Maybe that will make me less annoyed at having to wait.

condensedcrab• 1 year ago

Depends if you want the engineer’s perspective or the device physics perspective.

I think the MOSFET circuit diagram has always made more sense to me because you can see intuitively see the “plunger” as the control input.

defgeneric• 1 year ago

The BBC's Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity [0] documentary really made it click for me. The historical development and the conceptual development are woven together nicely.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_Awe:_The_Story_of_El...

ohgr3• 1 year ago

No. This book won’t teach you that because based on the author’s previous work he doesn’t either. He knows how to sell books.

If you really want to know how transistors work and how to use them properly it’s going to be difficult as they sit on a fairly large pile of algebra and theory. If you don’t know this you might be able to get simple circuits working by cutting and pasting bits but you won’t be able to get past that ever.

The best references on this are actually The Art of Electronics. Not necessarily the main book but the associated student manual. Also the book Experimental Methods in RF Design by Wes Hayward actually has the most useful functional description and modelling approach of transistors.

neuroelectron2• 1 year ago

OK I get how they work conceptually, I get how they work physically, but when I actually try to build a circuit with them it never works.

megadata3• 1 year ago

It helps a lot understanding diodes first. Like, really understand them. Then transistors are built on top of that knowledge.

mindslight3• 1 year ago

My recommendation - start with FETs (MOSFETs) for switching instead of BJTs. FETs are voltage controlled devices, which maps more naturally to how people think about electronics without the math-heavy analysis.

snvzz• 1 year ago

So, is this book any good?

jaggederest• 1 year ago

I found Moritz Klein's videos very interesting to help me understand practical aspects of circuit design as related to analog synthesizers:

https://www.youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0/playlists

mwlp• 1 year ago

I haven't watched any of the lectures, but there's also Georgia Tech's Analog Circuits for Music Synthesis https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOunECWxELQS5bMdWo9Vh...

diggan2• 1 year ago

Hear hear! I'm currently learning DIY synths from that very channel too, currently on episode 3, very good videos for laymen. Although some extra resources are needed if you want to have further understanding, as he doesn't go too deep into theory, but for being video instructions/tutorials, I find that the balance is good on that.

leke• 1 year ago

Are advertisements like this allowed on HN?

gsf_emergency_2• 1 year ago

Is Simon on HN?

mindcrime• 1 year ago

From what I've seen, generally speaking, yes. Even more so if the site wasn't submitted by the owner.

Self-promotion has even always been explicitly allowed here, but I believe the guidelines contain some verbiage to the effect of "your primary activity here should not be self-promotion". I have no official info, but just from observing things over the years, it appears that accounts who promote their own content overly frequently, and/or only post self-promotional content, are the ones that get shadow-banned or set to auto-dead status.

htk• 1 year ago

You can submit anything, the community decides if it's interesting enough.

dartharva• 1 year ago

Probably needs (2022) in the title. The book is available on libgen for anyone who wants to take a look.

mcshicks• 1 year ago

I don't know, it's hard for me to know what the author means by "fundamentals". I looked at the table of contents from the amazon website, and somethings that I consider pretty fundamental like Thevenin's Theorem didn't seem to be listed there. By comparison it's in Chapter 1, page 9 on my copy of "The Art of Electronics". I'm not trying to knock the book, it could be very handy, but I would use the term "basics" as opposed to "fundamentals" to describe the content as I understand it.

magic_hamster• 1 year ago

Slightly baffled why this is on HN and especially as the no.1 link. For this to be upvoted so high I expected to find a spectacular interactive learning experience someone has made for fun, or at least a substantial free book.

But it's just another book on Amazon like a dozen other books on the same subject.

strunz• 1 year ago

Yeah this is an ad

OJFord3• 1 year ago

Sometimes an idea is upvoted more than the content at the submitted link, I think. i.e. people that want to learn and enjoy the discussion here, regardless of whether they end up thinking the Monk book is a useful resource to do so.

megadata3• 1 year ago

Sometimes it's a paid botnet.

silisili3• 1 year ago

When I was a teen, I applied to be an ATT lineman. At that time at least, they sent you a giant study guide that has everything one might want to know about electricity. I was actually blown away by the material.

I've since lost it, but wonder if it exists on the Internet somewhere. My cursory search didn't return anything.

spit2wind• 1 year ago

This page lists several ATT publications and has a link to a 1953 publication that could fit your description (and could have been a subsequent editini).

Otherwise, maybe you'd recognize the name as one of the other publications?

https://www.long-lines.net/sources/ATT_tech_books.html

silisili3• 1 year ago

Nice! I browsed through the 1953 edition quickly, and it's very similar. So probably some updated version of that.

I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying. This would have been before the internet was big, so probably isn't as exciting now.

greatgib• 1 year ago

Is the top link just an advertisement for a book to be bought or is it something I'm missing with the link? There are countless of books and website with that kind of content, but Google is good enough to find them...

trod12345• 1 year ago

This is just an advertisement for buying the book. It was someone's idea of a shameless plug.

iancmceachern2• 1 year ago

The best way to learn this stuff is hands on, build kits, those 200 in one things RadioShack used to sell, etc

defraudbah• 1 year ago

what build kits are available now?

iancmceachern2• 1 year ago

Anything you want! Check out Sparkfun and Adafruit, they have kits for everything!

urda• 1 year ago

Reminds me of those old RadioShack hobby electronic boards with all the different components to try and work with.

jlcases• 1 year ago

Knowledge structuring is key for self-taught learning. I've found that organizing resources using MECE principles (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) significantly improves the learning curve, especially for complex technical topics.

andy_ppp• 1 year ago

This looks cool! I’ve been looking for a good valve amp to build from a kit, ideally I want it to be integrated, EL34 tubes and at least 25 watts, anyone know of anything? Bonus points for designed/supplied in the UK.

anthk2• 1 year ago

I've got "Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series" as a PDF from a gopher hole:

gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/neetsmodules_202003

The whole directory it's amazing too: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/links/

Also, there's Usenet. Subscribe to to sci.electronics.repair and sci.electronics. Outdated? Delayed answers? ok, but you will get correct ones and if you set your learning at a slower but dedicated pace, with no distractions (turn the notifications off), with either PDF or Physical books and a electronic simulator like TkGate, you will get the theory at really fast speeds.

belter4• 1 year ago

The best suggestion to get a core review of the basic concepts as starter, and that Dave from the EEVblog [1] recommended several times, is the section Fundamentals of Radio Electronics from [2] - "The Arrl Handbook for Radio Communications" . Plus you get all the other stuff around Radio.

It will cover all the basics. Old ones can be found on the intertubes. It is now a classical. Even used 2015 versions go for $300 dollars or more.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@EEVblog/playlists

{2] https://www.arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2023

sunshine-o• 1 year ago

Any recommendation for open source software or website where one can learn about electricity in an interactive or gamified way?

nxpnsv2• 1 year ago

What's wrong with taking formal courses? I think that is a perfectly legitimate way of learning stuff.

hashstring2• 1 year ago

I think it was not implied that there is something wrong with it. It’s just that, that requires having access to it and being available to take it.

wobfan• 1 year ago

In addition this is maybe a good option (haven't looked into it) for people (like me, actually) who are just not interested in the formal aspects. I profesionally have nothing to do with electronics whatsoever, but am still naturally interested in it. Learning stuff with formal literature takes away all that natural interest for me and makes it work, so I would eventually stop doing it. Learning it in a practical way though would work way better and keep me interested and motivated.

zabzonk• 1 year ago

Back when I was about 12 (so 60 years ago, or so) you could get Phillips kits with a couple of transistors which allowed you to breadboard things like an amplifier, a radio, or a moisture detector. Had fun with them, but didn't really learn so much theory, and never have. Though I do know quite a bit about software.

checker659• 1 year ago

I wish someone would write an electronics book for hobbyists solely using simulators like Falstad and PCB design using KiCad.

Learn electricity and electronics fundamentals without taking a formal course

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