Please See This If You Really Think Your Electricity Concepts Are Strong

Thread Starter

steeve_wai

Joined Sep 13, 2007
47
pardon me,i am a little frustrated...
anyway,please review the contents of the following links:

ARTICLES ABOUT ELECTRICITY:

http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html

TRANSISTORS:

http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html

ELECTRIC ENERGY:

http://amasci.com/miscon/ener1.html


VOLTAGE (THESE ARE PDF FILES)

http://science.uniserve.edu.au/school/curric/stage6/phys/stw2002/sefton.pdf

http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Erwchabay/mi/circuit.pdf


AND READ THIS
i dont know if bill's explanation of transistors are really "good".it did not help me much...maybe it deserves to be read slowly and again and again...please review it...
i am NOT a nit picker...i feel that we must understand how things work,i.e in terms of physics(whenever possible and within our scope)...and not just MEMORISING formulae...

OK AND THIS IS FOR THE ADMIN...
please dont lock this post...i really think that there are some things we must ponder over...you can go through them too...i hope that my links will initiate some fruitful discussions that will enable us to become conceptually sound...

AND one more thing...IF YOU HAVE read the book ART OF ELECTRONICS by HOROWITZ AND HILL then please tell me where it helped you and where it did not,also mention your OCCUPATION when you reply about the book so that i know that some QUANTUM PHYSICIST is NOT recommending a book which has got mostly useless theory for engineers...
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
i dont know if bill's explanation of transistors are really "good".it did not help me much...maybe it deserves to be read slowly and again and again...please review it...
What do you mean by good? How do you feel it compares to our e-book section? How does it compare to the subject in other literature, e.g. Art of Electronics and Microelectronic Circuits?

Remember different people learn better in different ways, and what one person construes as good literature does not mean that someone else will find the exact same literature useful.

i am NOT a nit picker...i feel that we must understand how things work,i.e in terms of physics(whenever possible and within our scope)...and not just MEMORISING formulae...
Indeed so. Many on here will tell you that the best way of learning electronics is a moderate dose of everything: physics, practical theory, mathematics, practical work, testing.

OK AND THIS IS FOR THE ADMIN...
please dont lock this post...i really think that there are some things we must ponder over...you can go through them too...i hope that my links will initiate some fruitful discussions that will enable us to become conceptually sound...
No problem.

AND one more thing...IF YOU HAVE read the book ART OF ELECTRONICS by HOROWITZ AND HILL then please tell me where it helped you and where it did not,also mention your OCCUPATION when you reply about the book so that i know that some QUANTUM PHYSICIST is NOT recommending a book which has got mostly useless theory for engineers...
Art is very good at the practical aspects, not just good practice but also bad practice. It is also very good if you do not want to get bogged down in mathematics or first principles derivations of how something works. And yes, I am an engineer, not a physicist.

Dave
 

recca02

Joined Apr 2, 2007
1,212
i really doubt any of the members here might be not busy enough to read all those articles.
in case there is something u want to discuss quote them here.
 

jpitz31

Joined Oct 24, 2007
39
Yes,

I stumbled across Bill's site about a year ago and have had it bookmarked every since. His definitions at first seem very subtle, but after you read them a few times, it like getting hit with a hammer and then your eyebrows go up!

He combines his viewpoints of what an engineer sees and then what a physicist sees but explains it in simple English.

He also has quite a bit of interesting videos on YouTube.

Check them out if you have time.

Thanks

Joe
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Since two of you now say Bill's explanation of transistors is not very good/clear, can I ask what specifically is unclear?

Dave
 

cheddy

Joined Oct 19, 2007
87
Since two of you now say Bill's explanation of transistors is not very good/clear, can I ask what specifically is unclear?

Dave
I think something can be said with it's length. Once an explanation becomes lengthy enough you have a hard time remembering the concepts explained in the beginning by the time you are half way through.
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
I think something can be said with it's length. Once an explanation becomes lengthy enough you have a hard time remembering the concepts explained in the beginning by the time you are half way through.
Any treatise of transistors will be pretty lengthy by the very nature of the topic. I suppose the author could benefit from better structuring to ensure that relevant sections are grouped and treated together as opposed to an "all-thoughts on one page". Perhaps this is one piece of literature where creating a crib sheet may be suitable.

Dave
 

thingmaker3

Joined May 16, 2005
5,083
I was not impressed by the articles. They are full of straw-man arguments and poor metaphors. As Dave notes, they are poorly organized.

Donald P. Leach does a far better job. If Beaty had read Leach in the first place, I doubt he ever would have had the problems claimed.
 

mozikluv

Joined Jan 22, 2004
1,435
i believe that the view of cheddy and steevie on those articles are shared by others.:)

however, we must bare in mind any author, probably most who writes on a certain topic has already created a certain idea on how he/she will project the topic. what is usually written or discussed is usually a product of lack of info which they have also read or what they believe that it was not thoroughly explained. hence when we stumble on such articles and our idea or knowledge is still quite limited, often times questions arises in our mind why this or that not answered in such article. the natural conclusion is, we often believe that the article was not well written or explained based on our lack of knowledge.

my unsolicited advice is "don't just stick to one or two articles but keep on searching till you're fully informed":D

moz
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
I choked at the point where he insisted that electrical current is not the result of electron flow. I simply lost interest in his further arguments.
 

cheddy

Joined Oct 19, 2007
87
I choked at the point where he insisted that electrical current is not the result of electron flow. I simply lost interest in his further arguments.
I am interested in what you have said. Is what the author said in the following quote true or not? Do you have a better explanation to give us?

"The stuff that moves within wires is not named Electric Current. Instead it is called Electric Charge. It's the charge that flows, never the current.....Wires are not full of current, they are full of charges that can move. Electric charge is real stuff; it can move around. But electric current is not stuff."
 

Salgat

Joined Dec 23, 2006
218
Current is the quantized exchange of charge. This guy sounds like hes trying really hard to sound like he knows some secret that the rest of the world doesn't.
 

thingmaker3

Joined May 16, 2005
5,083
"The stuff that moves within wires is not named Electric Current. Instead it is called Electric Charge. It's the charge that flows, never the current.....Wires are not full of current, they are full of charges that can move. Electric charge is real stuff; it can move around. But electric current is not stuff."
"Current" is defined in most texts as "a flow of moving charge carriers." I don't know what text Beaty read that has him confused, but its his own problem. What he means by "stuff" is anybody's guess. Personally, I think he's been sniffing "stuff.":cool:
 

jpitz31

Joined Oct 24, 2007
39
I choked at the point where he insisted that electrical current is not the result of electron flow. I simply lost interest in his further arguments.
Bill did not say electrical current is not the result of electron flow.

Many students new to electronics get caught up in these water, pipe, plumbing metaphors and then try to apply them in a literal fashion.

I think the point he is trying to make is "It's the charge that flows, never the current"

What is charge made up of? Electrons, (and in some cases protons) So yes electrons, (charge) does indeed flow.

As Dave points out each person learns differently.

I agree that Bill could organize his thoughts a bit better.

But the distinctions he points out are indeed valuable.

For me, coming from a programming background, I did first try to imaging an empty pipe, and when you turned on the battery, you then followed the flow around from the battery through the circuit, just as you would flow a program or algorithm from begin to end.

The "Charges are not squirted out of the power supply as if the power supply was some sort of water tank. If you imagine that the charges leave through the positive or negative terminal of the power supply; if you think that the charges then spread throughout the hollow pipes of the circuit, then you've made a fundamental mistake. Wires do not act like "empty electron-pipes," and a power supply does not supply any electrons."

and "If circuits are like plumbing, then none of the "pipes" of a circuit are ever empty. This idea is extremely important, and without it we cannot understand semiconductors ...or even conductors. Metals contain a vast quantity of movable electrons which forms a sort of "electric fluid" within the metal. A simple block of copper is like a water tank! Physicists call this fluid by the name "electron sea of metals." Semiconductors are always full of this movable "charge-stuff."

and

"OK, since the "pipes" are already full of "liquid," then in order to understand circuitry we should NOT trace out the path starting at the terminals of the power supply. Instead, we can start with any component on the schematic. If a voltage is applied across that component, then the charges within that component will start to flow."

These key concepts did help me break away from the programming paradigm.

Yes, the more viewpoints you can get on a topic will help you establish your own knowledge and viewpoints on the subject, so reading other authors is a practice that I employ.

I did look up the Donald P. Leach books, they appear to be out of print and very dated. Amazon and ebay half has copies of his books. But I would be concerned that some topics would be dated.


Thanks

Joe
 

thingmaker3

Joined May 16, 2005
5,083
They're not dated. Electricity works the same way today as it did a million years ago. Certainly it has not changed in the past thirty years!
 

jpitz31

Joined Oct 24, 2007
39
I did look up the Donald P. Leach books, they appear to be out of print and very dated. Amazon and ebay half has copies of his books. But I would be concerned that some topics would be dated.
I believe I said that "Some topics" would be dated. I did not indicate that the concept of Electricity was dated.

But it would be nice to have analogies that were not over 20 years old and related to something a bit more modern.
 

thingmaker3

Joined May 16, 2005
5,083
I don't recall any analogies from Leach. That's one thing I really liked about him! He was able to present electricity as electricity - instead of fish, or water, or little green aliens.
 
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