Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Electronic Circuit Design

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I had this book in an undergradute class in electronics and it did not teach me anything. It explains the physics of the devices, but that part of the chapter is not interesting enough to read. The example problems are plug and chug problems, which provide you with almost all of the necessary numbers and the reader only has to follow the given equations. This would make the student think that all problems can be done using the exact equations given except for the fact that multiple equations are given for similar situations with no explanation of the differences. Finally, the end of chapter problems are much harder than the example problems and cannot be done by simply following the equations.

I'm not sure why this book has received such poor reviews. I've read about half of it and like it. As a long time working engineer without a degree in engineering this book is a perfect way to catch up on all that stuff I didn't learn in school.

It has just enough equations to explain the concepts, plenty of diagrams, good verbal explanations. What's not to like? There have been a few explanations I didn't fully understand but hey any of you naysayers ever tried reading a Quantum Mechanics book?

By way of comparison, everyone seems to think Art of Electronics is a good book, but it's completely useless, I've never opened that book and learned anything useful, there's no theory no equations no nothing, and that was the standard text for many classes.

This is good and useful I intend to work through every chapter carefully in due time.

Yes, this is a horrible book, I do not even know why the professors choose to use this book, the author is horrible at explaining anything.

This book is absolutely unintelligible in the places that can be the most confusing. It is not structured in the slightest, the equations are inconsistent, and the actual problems require you to use techniques not shown in the book at all. Random assumptions are pulled out of thin air and the diagrams have subscripts that aren't referenced anywhere else in the chapter.

I have no idea why the professor uses this. His lectures are painfully trivial, and the book is incomprehensible, which makes for a very painful experience.

This book is far more confusing than it needs to be. It was clearly written for experts in circuit design and not for students. Frequently, the book will skip several steps under the assumption that you understand the reasoning and steps in between. However, if it's your first time learning about transistors, you end up more confused when the chapter is finished. Problems in the back are also equally frustrating, and often times appear to be compleatly contradictory to what is "explained" in the chapter.

Do yourself a favor, if you are taking a class that requires this book, take it from someone else. This book is evil.

Avoid spending money on buying this book if possible. It is a very poor product. It is incomplete, too brief or simply skips too many steps in worked problems. It also does not seem to emphasize design as the title would suggest. I wish the professor never chose this book.

Good explanation of modeling semiconductors. Good explanation of semiconductor physics. I got this book for free and haven't done any problems for it so I can't comment on that aspect. But I like the way it's written and organized. I wish there were bigger pictures and graphs.

It's a great introductory text to electronic circuit fundamentals. From bottom up, it covers PN junctions, Device physics of MOSFET and BJT and then go in depth about IC designs. Author demonstrated great understanding of the fundamental behavior of these devices in various frequency domains. At MIT, we use this book a lot and it's deep. A lot of great books in analog ICs are deep like Paul Grey's Analysis and Design of Analog IC and John Martin's Analog IC design. This book is ten times easy to read than those ones. I still learn something new every time I thumbed through this book. Highly recommended but don't expect to digest everything taught in the book.

The authors of this book should be fined for writing such garbage and never be allowed to write a book again. Not even childrens books.

but then again, Dr. Comer was also teaching the class. I can imagine it's not as effective when the author isn't there to explain it, and the book isn't without it's errors, but it is still better than some of the circuits books I've used prior.