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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the short-circuits dept.

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.

8 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Looks more like intermediate to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm a rank beginner and I'm interested in this subject but I browsed through a couple of chapters and they seem pretty dense and beyond what I would consider a basic undergraduate course, at least for a first-timer. I appreciate the effort though.

    1. Re:Looks more like intermediate to me by Harold+Halloway · · Score: 4, Informative

      Quite. Any electronics course that starts with Chapter 1: Algebraic Approximations, the first section of which is entitled Large Asymptotic Approximation, strikes me as being more theoretical than practical and certainly not for beginners.

    2. Re:Looks more like intermediate to me by backslashdot · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, that is exactly where it must start. I'm sorry but designing anything more useful than an LED chaser or blinking WS2812 lights requires mathematics.

    3. Re:Looks more like intermediate to me by Harold+Halloway · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree that a firm understanding of maths is vital for an understanding of electronics. The way that it is presented though looks to me as though the course would be best presented in a classroom environment. It is perfectly possible to present the maths and the practical aspects side-by-side; dumping Large Asymptotic Approximations on the unsuspecting student as chapter 1, part 1 is not the way to do it for a lot of people.

    4. 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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Looks more like intermediate to me by quetwo · · Score: 2

      Grab the book "Make: Electronics (Learning by Discovery)". This is by far, the best book I've found for beginners. I used it for classes I teach at the HS level as well at our maker space. It demonstrates a lot of concepts pictorially, and also explains the science behind it.

    6. 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.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  2. Kudos! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    [Disclaimer] I just skimmed it, I really should be doing something else.

    That said, it looks well-organized and done with attention to detail. Kudos for tackling the hard stuff right on -- and to the beginners out there: don't fear to take that first step. It will pay off.

    Totally kudos for being *really* usable without javascript. See, I'm the usual anti-javascript whiner around here[1]. Now I understand that the embedded simulations won't work for a javascript-challenged browser, that's OK; moreover, for me the formulae look TeXy -- I understand that they look much nicer to javascript-friendlier browsers, courtesy of (guessing here, didn't look) MathJax, but the thing is I'm fluent enough in TeX (you gotta, if you don't "do" javascript, right?) and TeX is a *much* nicer fallback than (gasp!) MathML or whatever.

    It's not often that you can see these days someone going the extra mile to have their pages "degrade" gracefully. *Very* gracefully: the book still looks & feels gorgeous to us ascets.

    Kudos, overall.

    [1] Yes, I'm one of those folks who learnt as a child to not put everything I find on the street into his mouth.