Customer Reviews

Electronic Devices (Conventional Flow Version) (6th Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Explanations go very smoothly to the extent that somebody who has nothing to do with semi-conductor physics will understand it directly. Nice graphs, neat diagrams, etc.. but the problems are very weak in comparison to other books, such as Sedra & Smith's book (Micro-Electronic circuits). However, the explanations of the latter are on a very advanced level. I recommend Floyd's book for somebody who wants to understand, but not to practice!

I started using Floyd because it seemed to be at the right level for my students. Especially the weaker students would benefit from it, I hoped. I would rate "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill a much better book on electronics, but it is too difficult for many. However, I discovered annoying errors in Floyd's "Advanced Problems". For example 2-44, which I interpret as designing a clipping circuit for +18 V and -10 V using a single 24 V DC power supply; I don't know how to do it. Or problem 3-39, where a 110 V AC voltage is connected diodes and zeners that could never stand this. Anyway, in Fig. 3-71 it is not reasonable to have 220 Ohm resistors for both the 6.8 V Zener and the 24 V zener. Howcome errors like these can persist in the fourth edition?

My teacher used this book (fifth edition) in a basic electronics course (university). The book begins with some semiconductor basics, the pn-junction is explained and this chapter is OK if one just needs the very basic understanding (which in some schools might be enough). The second chapter contains some diodeapplications and power supply filters, the third chapter is about zener diode applications and some special purpose diodes. Then he goes on with the BJT, FET and the opamp. The physics behind the BJT is very superficially covered but he explains the operation of the BJT in principle. The book considers the basic transistor amplifier circuits but a lot of important material is left out. He uses the r-parameter model as the transistor smallsignal equivalent model, which is not a very common smallsignal model. The FET transistor comes as the next chapter, and here I miss the physics behind the FET. Of course one can design circuits without knowing the physics behind these devices, but knowing the physics will give you a much better understanding. It should also be mentioned that this book is limited to low frequency applications. Further, he doesn't say anything at all about feedback in transistoramplifiers which is one of the most important concepts in electronics. One should know that without feedback you are more or less limited to one-transistor amplifier stages, at least for the practical situation.
The chapters contaning the opamp is good as starting point, although the basics could be explained in more detail. Most of the material in these chapters are limited to simple opamp circuits, and you will therefore run through these chapters without the need for any deeper analysis.

What an electronics engineer should learn isn't all contained in this book, neither in any other book, but I must say this book is unsuccesful because almost everything in the book isn't deeply enough covered. You will probably not learn to design anything (at least not well enough), you just learn to calculate nodevoltages and the amplifier gain in different basic circuits. What is also left out is a general discussion about some certain problems, such as practical considerations for example. You will neither develop your basic mathematical skills using this book, because the author has left out most of the math (although very basic math), formulas are sometimes just stated without a derivation and so on. This book is just big and heavy because of the big font size and the many big pictures.
One might think that I do not need a book that consideres everything in very detail. The problem is that this book is too far from that and isn't therefore intended to students at a university level. I neither think that the author wrote a book, which can be compared to other "more serious" books in the field. This is a book for those who wants to learn the basics without any deeper mathematical insight.

There is a lot of books in this field, and I could mention a couple of good books that gave me a much better understanding of basic electronics. If you wanna learn op amp circuits, "Design with operational amplifiers and analog integrated circuits" by Sergio Franco, is just superior and contains everything you need about opamps, and is also well written. Books which covers transistors quite good are "Mircoelectronic circuits" by Sedra/Smith and "Microelectronics" by Millman/Grabel. The book by Sedra/Smith is quite easy to understand and contains very good homework problems. The only thing I'm missing here are some practical considerations.

This book is really good on explaining the fundamentals of electronic devices while incorporating the math explanations. Sedra/Smith (Microelectronics) has a little more math but Floyd does a better job in showing real world applications. Lastly, I would recommend owning both Floyd and Sedra/Smith to get you battle ready for the world of electronics design.

I am an instructor and find all of Floyd's books to be excellent...the problem is that many students like the ones in this forum are ill prepared in algebra, trig, basic calculus and just plain old problem solving, plus some don't read English well enough. Let's face it, a lot of [people] are trying to become technicians and engineers when they should be preparing themselves for fast food service.

I wish it had more detail on some of the subjects covered. More detailed exaples would be nice in its content, it would help drive iin the material. needs more examples.

I'm an electronics student with a teacher that doesn't have a clue how to teach and seems to know little about electronics. That means I have to rely on the textbook. This is the 2nd book by this author that I've had to use with this teacher. DO NOT GET THIS BOOK IF YOU'RE IN THE SAME SITUATION. Floyd seems to think we students already know what he's talking about. He also loves to refer to diagrams in the text then hides them elsewhere (not on the same page). I HATE THIS GUYS BOOKS!!!!!!!

Speaking as a first year student in Electronics, I wouldn't wish this book on my worst enemy.

It's not the content of the book, it's the chapter exercises.

For the second chapter there are 54 standard questions, a further 7 Advanced Problems and 18 more Simulator Problems.

In our class, nobody was able to finish the assignment past Question 40.

The problems started out normally, and became rather tricky by Problem 8.

The normal course is to go back through the chapter looking for examples that mirror the exercise, searching for techniques to memorize, and formulas to use. These were almost completely absent.

Certainly someone with a degree in Electronics would have the background to comprehend the questions without referents, but if we already had a degree we wouldn't be students !

The instructor worked through the problems 40-61 after passing back our homework, and this required two class sessions.

I think we have a prime example of "expert-itis" here.

It's rather like when a Calculus Professor writes a book on Calculus and ends up trying to impress his peers rather than teach the subject to introductory students.

These exercises would be suitable for a third-year book, but the content is too simple for a third year student.

The author should either add more examples with the suitable formulas, or get someone else to write the exercises to suit the text.

Recevied this book in good shape. The conners are bent from being used. This book was purchase knowing it was used, I thought it would be in worse shape then it realy was. This seller is good on thier word and I would purchaes more books from this seller. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

The book was the correct item and it arrived in good time. However, it was shipped in a thin plastic bag without any structure or padding. This book is 8.5x11x1.5 inches has nearly 1000 pages and weighs almost 5 pounds. As a result the corners of the cover were crushed and there was a half inch triangular gouge in the front cover. I'd have paid an extra $5.00 for better packaging rather than lose an unknown trade-in value.