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New Interactive Basic Electronics Textbook Launched Online (circuitlab.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader compumike writes: The group that first brought schematics and circuit simulation to the browser has now released the first few chapters of Ultimate Electronics: Practical Circuit Design and Analysis, an interactive online textbook for people learning electronics. The materials released today cover about half of a first semester undergraduate electronics course.

2 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Looks more like intermediate to me by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Designing complex circuits does require maths, but not on the level this thing starts out with.

    Of much more practical use would be to learn about all the basic component types. Maths wise all you really need is V=IR and you can design a huge number of useful circuits, from power supplies to complex digital systems. Throw in a little theory about op-amp operation, which is really basic maths, and you can do a whole lot of analogue stuff too.

    This is a beginners course. Lot of people learn by doing, in fact it's much more common than people who learn by reading alone. That's why most books start with practical examples and measuring stuff.

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  2. Re:Looks more like intermediate to me by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm an Electrical Engineer and I don't have a clue what Large Asymptotic Approximation is. After reading the chapter here I can say that yes these techniques are used, but generally on fairly complex or advanced circuits, usually containing active elements.

    Such approximations are necessary when a full closed-form solution is prohibitively complicated and the error in the approximation is sufficiently small. So yeah, definitely not an introductory technique.

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