Customer Reviews

Electrical Engineering: Principles and Applications (4th Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I am an engineering student at Georgia Tech and have used various texts covering topics from orginismal biology to quantum physics. Hambley's Electrical Engineering book is lacking in some of the most fundamental elements that are required for a successful text in any engineering field. There are very few solutions to problems and the solution that are provided are incomplete, providing mostly the final answer as opposed to a complete logic pattern to achieve the answer. The in chapter exercises demonstrate only the most meager applications of the sometimes tedious analysis steps or theorems. Finally, the clarity of author's intent is often hazed by generality or over specificity. I cannot see how an electrical engineering major can use this text for anything other than a stabilizer for a wobbling table. Save yourself the money and purchase a Schaum's outline and a problem work book complete with solutions.

I'm a first year student in electrical engineering and I've been using this book since August as main source. I must admit the overall coverage is great for less than 1000 pages. It is easy to find a concept and to navigate between the well divided chapters.

Unfortunatly, practical problems are left aside in this book. End-of-chapter problems are to basic for real-life engineering and are only useful to understand basic theory and to practice essential engineering maths. As many other books, complete solutions of problems are very hard to obtain via the Web.

I would recommend using it as a reference to get a second way to explain essential ideas concerning circuits. The first and second chapter are great because they cover basic circuit analysis in a nice way and a lot of examples are used along the book. But when you dive in semiconductors and op-amp, it is getting too heavy. Overall, nice diagrams and example for theory most of the time well explained, but forget about complex and useful circuits.

this book has a lot of potential. As a college student, I must say that this book really stinks. The in-text examples do not represent what is needed to do the homework. Also, there is no way to check answers to the homework problems as there are no solutions in the back and a solutions manual is not available. The lack of solutions makes this book very difficult to use.

I've worked as an engineer in the real world for over 4 years and have a small library of science and engineering texts, including about half a dozen EE texts, all of which are superb. I've never seen anyone devote two full chapters to resistor networks, nearly 150 pages!! In the real world engineers DESIGN circuits, not spend all day reverse engineering resistive networks, pretending they don't know the difference between a battery and a resistor! We drew circuit loops in jr high, I think we can move on to linear designs in college. Like I said, engineers write good engineering texts, not university professors.

I had to get this book because my school required it but if I had the choice I would look for a better book. This book has no answers in the back and a select few on the book resources. The example problems are not very helpful and the book is confusing in almost every way.

I am required to use this text for an introductory EE course for non-EE majors at my university. The text is at times nearly cryptic (especially FETs), does not give enough examples, and unfortunately most of the problems in the book do not have answers (some are online.) And, in general, I feel unprepared academically to answer the end-of-chapter problems after reading the chapter and doing the (very few) examples. I have done online searches on some of the subjects in this book and come across free webpages with FAR better explanations. If you learn by doing problems, don't waste your money here.

It does not seem that many people like this book. I used it for a sophmore level analog circuits course at my university. I found it to be an excellent text and very helpful in understanding electrical engineering. This text is designed to be read with a paper and pencil in hand. It is not a sit down and understand it kind of book. It requires some sincere and dedicated study, as the topic demands. It presents a number of difficult problems to help stretch the analytic capabilities of the student. It also comes with some very useful software. It isn't the best text book I have ever seen but it is close.

This is a horrible book to start out with. If you're new to the concepts in the book you will not learn much. If you're already knowledgeable in the topics covered it might be a decent reference, but to learn anything from...? Useless.

I had a class that required this book, and to be honest, this book is not all that well structured and written. The only real use for this book is the formulas and explaining several of the most basic concepts of electrical engineering (how to calculate resistance, basics of electromagnetism, you know, the bare basics). It is very poor on giving examples and explanations on how the concepts apply in real life situations and to the problems they give at the end of each chapters. And even the monotonous "solve this circuit problems" are not explained in the text very well. For about 70% of the problems I couldn't figure out the problems at the end of the chapters without consulting a solutions manual or the instructor. I don't recommend this text to teachers unless you'd prefer to go over the samples and concepts in much more detail than what the text covers. And even then, it will most likely give students who are introduced into electrical engineering a hard time.

I feel the text is a bit scattered. The message is sometimes drawn out and not as clear as it could be.