Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Electric Circuits, Second Edition (Book & CD-ROM)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Since the reviews for most of the other first Circuit Analysis books I could find were fairly uniform in their negative opinion on the understandability of those books, I was worried about this book. But, since the reviews of the previous version were very good, I thought I'd give it a try. Basically, I'm very impressed with it. Since I'm working through the book on my own without any peers or professors available to clarify things, the book I use HAS to be readable. This one is. The authors clearly explain almost everything (there are a few minor omissions of (non-core) material that the authors consider to be Intuitively Obvious to the Most Casual Observer (i.e., stuff they thought everyone would have run into from everyday life)). Within each section of each chapter, they immediately follow every concept with several Examples showing how to work with the material and Practice problems for the reader to do. So, if you don't immediately understand the theory, there are several applications available to help you along. At the end of the chapter, the book includes:

- A Summary of the material covered.
- Answered Review Questions.
- About 100 Exercises. These are broken up into sections so you know which ones require what material. The odd ones are answered at the back of the book.
- Comprehensive Exercises which use all the material covered.

In the Preface, the authors describe the book as:

"...[W]ritten for a two-semester or three-quarter course in linear circuit analysis.... It is broadly divided into three parts. Part 1, consisting of Chapters 1 to 8, is devoted to dc circuits.... Part 2, which contains Chapter 9 to 14, deals with ac circuits.... Part 3, consisting of Chapters 15 to 19 is devoted to advanced techniques for network analysis.... [T]he main prerequisites... are physics and calculus. A very important asset of this text is that ALL the mathematical equations and fundamentals of physics needed by the student are included in the text."

From what I can see, that's a very good description of the book.

The only negatives I can find in the book are all minor. Occasionally, there's a wrong answer (AFAIK). There are also a couple of cases where the authors put new information into the exercises instead of covering it in the text. Slightly more serious is that in some cases the Example and Sample problems focus on problems with certain attributes. But, the Exercises will then focus on problems with entirely different (unexplained) attributes. It takes some work to translate these into the material covered in the section. Also, I'd have preferred having Exercises at the end of each section instead of clumped together at the end of the chapter. The end-of-chapter Exercises should be limited to the Review Questions and Comprehensive Exercises. It would also have been nice if McGraw Hill had provided a PDF version of the book on their web site (ARIS) for registered users (there's a registration code in the front of the book).

My biggest complaint is probably regarding the tools used in the book: PSpice (a circuit simulator), KCIDE (an integrated design environment for circuit analysis), and MATLAB (a symbolic manipulator and solver). PSpice 9.1 used throughout the text of the book. Unfortunately, KCIDE uses PSpice 10.0. From what I can find on the web, the two PSpice versions don't play nicely together. So, you really have a choice of using the version of the tool used in the book or using the version required by another tool used in the book. MATLAB, unlike PSpice and KCIDE, doesn't have a free student version. As a replacement for it, I used Maxima (available from SourceForge).

Still, all the complaints are minor. I found the book to be very readable and rate it at a Very Good 4 stars out of 5.

Compared to other standard circuit textbooks which are available out there, this one has done an excellent job. It is written in a readable style that is so rare among textbooks in this field. The flow from topic to topic is straightforwardly continuous and the reading can even be very enjoyable (especially the introduction to each chapter). I very much wish there were more circuit textbooks written like this one, so that you can read and learn by yourself. But very unfortunately, most of them are extremely unreadable and so untransparent in their presentation of fundamental concepts (you only have to take a look at texts such as Nilsson or even Dorf). For this reason, I think, Alexander's book deserves even more credit.

This is a very fine book. It explains the concepts very clearly and maybe used for signals too, when studying fourier and laplace transforms. The authors do a superb job and make challenging concepts sound easy for the student. Extremely organized and well prepared book.

I don't know about Circuits books in German or French, but this one is by far the most educational circuits textbook written in English. The style is very student friendly, and in addition, the home work problems are very useful and pedagogically sound. (There are many texts which contain problems that are virtually unsolvable). I'm wondering how many engineering schools are already using this book? It certainly deserves a great degree of recognition, especially since the second edition (which has considerably improved) contains an interesting CD-ROM!

I guess I must have tried out quite a couple INTRODUCTORY textbooks on Electric Circuits (and stumbled on numerous utterly non-sensical ones). This text by Alexander is quite new and for an introductory text, EXTREMELY readable. Undergraduate students should definitely try this one out - even Freshmen with some algebra background can read themselves into this book. Although I haven't tried out the interactive CD yet, I must say, the educational quality is almost superb. Regarding learning how to solve circuit problems, texts might not get any better than this. Just read and follow one or two examples - and you'll realize it yourself.

Overall this is a really great book with lots of examples and good problems, however my complaint is that some of the problems haven't been covered in the examples and so they are too difficult to solve. For instance, in the chapter on node voltages, none of the examples covers floating voltage sources that have other components like resistors in series with them, yet a number of the problems involve such floating voltage sources. I had to refer to the Schaum's Outline of Basic Circuit Analysis (another very good book, btw) to find an example problem for that.
If you're looking for books on electric circuits, however, I would definitely recommend this one along with the Schaum's Outline book I mentioned above.

It's a good read so far. Understandable with tons of examples and practice problems. It is for the first circuit analysis course. It is not for beginning digital. If you work the problems you will learn the basics towards being a EE or good tech. It is calculus based, but the math is held down to a tolerable level.

This is probably the most useful engineering textbook I have on my shelf. Not only is it very easy to understand, but as a reference, I like it even better! The math is lucid, yet never overwhelming, and in addition, the problems are quite interesting. I highly recommend this book, rather than Nilsson's. (I think one of the Authors of this book has written/edited an EE handbook as well, which I am less familiar with. Maybe I'd check that one out too)

That's finally a book useful to a student. I really enjoyed the chaps on Laplace and Fourier transf. Problems + examples Carefully laid out. Great for self study.

I purchased this text from another website, but I'm writing here to warn potential buys of several things.

First off, praise.
I was quite surprised to find that many of the equations used in this book have proven derivations whereas other texts simply state the equations and expect students to memorize them. The derivations are very useful in understanding why one would use such an equation in the first place.
The breadth of this text is very large (look inside the cover [on Amazon] to see for yourself). Homework problems range from simple to very challenging (sometimes to the point of frustration). Ultimately, this text does well to introduce the unfamiliar student with the basics of circuits, circuit elements, and basic properties of electricity.

More importantly, causes for disappointment with this text:
I HIGHLY suggest that one does not purchase the newest edition at full price. If possible, purchase the International Edition or an older edition. I am VERY dissatisfied with the author for their "new" edition.

1. There is no solution's manual for the newest edition at this time. Some homework problems left me wondering where to even start (as, in some cases, the homework problem did not even remotely resemble an example or practice problem). Challenge is good, but often problems became frustrating because I could not determine the logic behind the solution. This edition has been out for nearly 3 years and I have yet to see a solution manual for a very expensive text.
2. I got my hands on a solutions manual for the 2nd-latest edition and, through that, found the main differences between edition 3 and 4. Ultimately, the "new" edition features problems whose numbers (values for sources and other circuit elements) have literally been swapped, multiplied by two, or by some other simple number (If you choose to verify this, do note that you will find problems here-and-there that do not exist in the third edition, but only seldom will you find this; also, some problems have been swapped -- yes, same problem, different problem number). Shame on the author for this! I guarantee that you will learn just as much from edition 3 than from this fake of a "new" edition. In fact, the 3rd edition solutions manual I acquired has proven to be enough to guide me through the problems in the 4th edition.
3. For its breadth, the text lacks insight and explanation that I consider important. A quick example: transistors are introduced and the text explains that there are "pnp" and "npn" transistors. Without quite explaining what this means, the book moves on to cover circuit analysis for circuits including transistors. I understand that transistors are treated as black boxes (as are op-amps and other integrated circuits in this text) because the focus is on circuit analysis, but, being new to this field, I wanted to know, even from a quick glance, what a "pnp" transistor was. A quick search on the internet revealed more than enough to enlighten me on the (internal) nature of transistors. I understand complete coverage is asking too much, but a quick peek into devices and integrated circuits would be much appreciated.

My verdict:
This is a great text for anyone looking to explore circuits, analysis techniques, circuit elements, and practical design problems (which I found very interesting, fun, and documented adequately). However, I see no immediate need to own the fourth edition. Given that the fourth edition still leaves many things to be desired (depth-wise), the 3rd edition accompanied with online (free) resources should suit a new student with just as much effectiveness as this "new" fourth edition. I recommend this text -- edition 3 or a very cheap 4th edition.