The best book ever: Art of Electronics Horowitz/Hill

Thread Starter

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
I got a little frustrated while working through our textbook so I decided to supplement it with the Art of Electronics. I have no idea why this is not the text book for all electronics. My observation about my new text book (Electronic Devices Conventional Current by Floyd) is that it does not explain important things and glosses over vital concepts. I did find that this confusing way of explanation does a good job of making you work for the formulas and gain a good understanding. But only because they go about it in a strange way that you have to really work at it to understand. It’s very time consuming and tedious.. and in some cases only confusing.

Anyhow my rant over. Art of Electronics gets right to the point and does an amazing job... very clear. Highly recommended.
 
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Thread Starter

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
I will look at that as well. I’m interested getting a thorough understanding of transistors. I prefer mosfets but I’m intrigued by transistors.

Are you referring to introduction to electronic circuits by Spencer/Ghausi?
 
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joeyd999

Joined Jun 6, 2011
5,237
I got a little frustrated while working through our textbook so I decided to supplement it with the Art of Electronics. I have no idea why this is not the text book for all electronics. My observation about my new text book (Electronic Devices Conventional Current by Floyd) is that it does not explain important things and glosses over vital concepts. I did find that this confusing way of explanation does a good job of making you work for the formulas and gain a good understanding. But only because they go about it in a strange way that you have to really work at it to understand. It’s very time consuming and tedious.. and in some cases only confusing.

Anyhow my rant over. Art of Electronics gets right to the point and does an amazing job... very clear. Highly recommended.
AoE was my bible for the first 10 years of my career.

After that, it was Atlas Shrugged.
 

Thread Starter

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
Who’s John Galt?

I’ve never read AoE until this confounded new text book I had to read for refresher class. It’s like night and day. It had me so confused... for instance how do you introduce an emitter follower and just say the voltage gain is one... who cares. It’s an incredible current amplifier.

Edit actually it’s not even 1 cause of the voltage drop across BE
 

Thread Starter

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
Hey if we have to account for about 0.2v through CE. On 5 Vin we get 4.2 out... that’s pretty substantial to me loss of 16%. I’m only playing with saturation at the moment. I like how you can switch the high side with it but little concerned about the open collector fault condition.

Ok figured it out. Current dropping resistor creates a crappy voltage divider through BE and load and removes all the good qualities. It’ll just need a low current resettable fuse from logic out. I might like this even more than mosfets in some cases. Output not affected by beta. Higher beta makes it more efficient. Regulates load and voltage.
 
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jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
A lot of people agree for AoE 2nd ed. My version is well used. AoE 3rd ed. was much later, and while extensively updated and still very good, it lost some of its shine according to some.
 

danadak

Joined Mar 10, 2018
4,057
I will look at that as well. I’m interested getting a thorough understanding of transistors. I prefer mosfets but I’m intrigued by transistors.

Are you referring to introduction to electronic circuits by Spencer/Ghausi?
Yes, I think, have to look at mine to see if Spencer was also contributor.

Regards, Dana.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,846
the Art of Electronics. I have no idea why this is not the text book for all electronics.
That's one of my least favorite books; and I have a number text books from my college days and from people who didn't see the value in keeping their old text books. I don't like the style and errors remain after multiple revisions. I definitely wouldn't use it for a college class.
 

Thread Starter

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
Haven’t run into it yet, I’ve skipped to chapter 2 and like the transistor chapter. I think what I’m finding is that it’s too much to cover in a couple chapters. But the book I’m using is just giving you an understanding so you can use it later. I just like the emitter follower portion of the AoE. It just bugs me darlingtons and Sziklai pair are only a paragraph each in my current book. Maybe I’m just overloaded. It’s a rough couple chapters.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
No, it's not the intro book. After learning basic circuit analysis:

Title: Electronic Devices and Circuits : Discrete and Integrated
Author: Mohammed S. Ghausi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Binding: Hardcover
Synopsis:

This introduction to electronics includes the latest technology, such as BI-MOS op-amps, BI-FETS, phase locked loops and switched capacitor filters. The text features a circuit-theoretic approach throughout, thus providing continuity with the prerequisite circuit analysis course. Avoiding
and encyclopedic presentation, which often overwhelms students, the author focuses on basic topics of importance, covering them in a manner appropriate to the level of the student's background. Emphasis is on simplified analysis technique with a view towards a preliminary design.
 

Thread Starter

Wolframore

Joined Jan 21, 2019
2,609
I just found Electronic Devices and Circuits by David A Bell. I’m in the diode chapter and I like it. It’s much more descriptive and detailed. I think the frustration with my book is that it glosses over things very quickly but gives no details. Just description and formulas. I think someone mentioned an encyclopedia approach.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Dr. Malvino and I don't seem to get along very well. Almost finished with Grob's Basic Electronics. May start Floyd or Boylestead next but it will be a solid-state book. I did finish Boylsen's Complete Electronics and liked it a lot. Along with a bunch of Arduino and Make books.
 

Teris

Joined Nov 4, 2017
38
My opinion is that the book "The art of electronics" is overrate. I believe that the reason for that is the word "Art" on the title. This is not "bible" of electronics and for me there are many of better books to learn electronics.
 

MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,619
One of my pet peeves on the book is the bad example/practice of using the Earth Ground symbol for circuit power common.
Also they do not appear to show a listing of electronic symbols at all!
Max.
 
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