Customer Reviews

Practical Electronics for Inventors 2/E

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book's intended audience is the serious engineer (probably with an engineering degree in a field other than electronics) looking to get into electronics. The book's title hints at this, and the book delivers on this level. This book is too advanced for the neophyte dabbler without any math background, who will quickly get lost in the math and the lack of "cookbook" examples. Make no mistake, there are plenty of example circuits, but they're provided to illustrate concepts-- they're not intended to be a recipe for constructing a real circuit (that's for the engineer to do!)

MATH: To appreciate this book, you must have a decent math background. This includes a solid working knowledge of advanced algebra and trigonometry, along with a 10000 foot view of calculus. A full working knowledge of actually solving differential equations is NOT required, but it's extremely helpful to know what derivatives and integrals look like and what they generally mean. However, the author never requires that you actually know how to solve any differential equations. Also, this book uses complex number theory, but the author provides all the details of complex number theory in the book, so there is no need to know it before reading.

After all those caveats, this is an excellent comprehensive introductory book on virtually all fundamental phenomenon and components of electronics. This includes the physics of the various electrical phenomenon, the real-life components that make up electronic circuits, and the basic "building-block" circuits that real-life circuits are built from. See the table of contents in Amazon's "look-inside" feature for an idea of the scope of topics. If you read and understand this book cover to cover, you will be designing, building, and testing your own basic circuits, without the need to ever rely on a "cookbook" circuit again.

This book does NOT cover the following:
* Advanced building-block circuits
* Specialty components and circuits
* Techniques and guidelines for designing difficult and advanced circuits
* The many "tricks" for designing and debugging circuits that years of experience will teach
* Advanced math for detailed analysis of circuits

The author's style is, above all else, pragmatic in every respect all the way to the very end. The explanations have the unmistakable and incessant theme of "THIS IS HOW IT WORKS AND WHY". The author trudges through as much (or as little) detail as necessary to enable the bright mind to understand, and then moves on to the next topic. Even when there is pure theory out of necessity, the author's style never strays far from cornerstone of always keeping things down to earth and practical.

This book is full of extensive explanations of the "WHY" of various phenomenon and components. For example, the phenomenon of "inductance" goes on for a dozen pages or so, explaining how the motion of electrons creates a magnetic field in a charging inductor, and how the magnetic fields create a back-voltage which acts against the flow of current. This explanation of inductance is decorated with dozens of detailed 3D illustrations showing the wire, electrons, magnetic fields, currents, voltages, etc. Other phenomenon are described in similar detail. The physics and theory that the author presents do not overwhelm you, but are sufficient to leave you feeling like you really understand the phenomenon, rather than just having to accept something as magic.

I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because there are too many errata, especially in the theory section. The book is in need of a simple editing pass by a person who understands EE. This is a shame because most of the errata are silly typos or accidental oversights, but they can confuse your ability to understand something when you're learning for the first time.

Just got the second edition. Most of the errors are still there. Glaring math errors. Schematic errors. Simple Example: 100 Watts/12 Volts is NOT 0.8 Amps. It's 8.4 Amps. Nor is 1.5 Volts * .1 Amps = .1 Watts. Both of these errors appear on page 15. These are minor examples. There are many others that aren't so minor and will send you down the wrong path. The errors are frequent and irritating. Basically, this is a resource only useful to readers willing to double check every concept before applying any of it. Hardly "practical".

Ok, so I see people praising this book and hating it. Those kind of reviews bug me because I can never make up my mind on a book. Fortunately, I bought this book already and didn't read these reviews.

Here's my take. I'm 8 years out of college and working for a big electronics company. I like this book. I need something to help me tinker with electronics and at the same time provide theory. I like the balance that this book strikes. I want to be able to look up old semiconductor company IC logos and at the same time read about RLC ckts resonating. That practical knowledge is hard to come by. There are plenty of good theory books, but I'm tired of amassing a library of many specialized, academic-style books. This book is not a text book, so the "inventor" part of the title should be paid attention to. If you want practice questions for theory understanding, buy a Schaum's Outline. This is the book to grab if you want to suddenly look up a basic logic gate that you forgot or you want to learn/review FM radio.

This book and Art of Electronics will get you into electronics with practical understanding. Get those and some of Forrest Mim's books for simple projects and you'll be good to go.

Good luck.

The first edition was great, but was plagued with errors and typos. The second edition has many of these corrected, but unfortunately many remain. I've started collecting them in amazon's wiki, at the bottom of the product page, and I hope you will contribute too as you find errors.

The second edition also has a greatly expanded theory section. It's improved in many ways--for example the explanation of what inductors do and how they work is now correct. But it is much longer, and you might not want to read all about magnetic fields and non-ideal capacitive effects in inductors if you really just want to know what inductors do in a circuit.

Overall, you get a huge amount of information for a low price, and it includes a lot of detailed practical information that it's hard to find in textbooks.

I have used (and abused) my favorite reference book, "The Art of Electronics" for years now, but it was last updated in 1989. So I have been looking for a replacement book, and this one seemed to fit the bill. Even with all the criticisms about errors, I figured that I would just download the errata and make the corrections. And now it's a PDF file about 30 pages long!. If it weren't for the outrageous number of errors, I would have given this book a 5 star rating.
But come on, Paul Scherz and McGraw Hill. This is already the second edition and what sort of laziness can you possibly justify in letting that many errors creep into this edition? You already had an internet full of complaints and corrections made for you. All you had to do was READ them and fix them. A book with your name on it should be treated as your engineering "resume" and this was really really sloppy work. And honestly, I would have a hard time even trusting the competency of an engineer in my engineering group who created so many errors, knew of the errors, and still didn't fix them. This is a possible fantastic book, marred by sloppy editing.
Also, it would be a lot easier to carry around as a hardback version (yes, I know, more expensive too)

About 10% of the figures seem to contain errors. Some trivial (like units) and others more unacceptable (Op-amp oscillator in figure 9.2 has + and - inputs the wrong way round). This is not the 1st edition, so many errors of a sometimes critical nature is simply shoddy work.

Conceptually it is a truly excellent resource of >900 pages. No strangely named circuits or jargon are left untouched. V. broad coverage of topics. Finally, some explanations of how circuits work. I'm astonished by the casual way in which circuits are usually presented without any explanation of their inner workings. Here we get a very plain and understandable explanation; I am not a young child but I appreciate the text's great simplicity in this regard.

If it were error free and contained the wealth of circuits that Forrest Mims provides, it would be 5 stars. Dollar per page, it's a fantastic bargain. You can secretly download it via torrent for free, but in this case the real thing is worth having.

First of all I would like to emphasize that this is a review of the second edition. Other reviewers pointed to the mistakes in the book and I also found many - look at the photos I'll upload (one with my comment in red), so that you can see for yourself.
The author says that many mistakes were corrected in this edition - I can't imagine how many were in the first one if almost in every example (at least to page 50) there is a mistake!
I wanted to learn electronics and absorb facts and knowledge with this book... But with so many mistakes - I don't know what information can be trusted in this book. Then what is the purpose of having it? To check if the book is wrong (or right) by referring to other sources?
I DO NOT recommend this book.

I am a mechanical engineer and I was looking for a book on electronics that insulted my intelligence. Sure enough, this book delivered. The figures alone do a wonderful job of explaining circuits. Reading the actual text is almost unnecessary. The writing style is very informal and unscientific, which is probably not a bad thing.

As for the math, it did not take me long to spot an error, I just got it today. There was a misplaced negative sign on page 75 which did not make any sense. Other reviewers have found issues with the math. For me, I am pretty well trained in engineering math and I already had a reasonable grasp of linear circuits (not nonlinear circuits), so I am willing to overlook these flaws. This is "practical electronics for inventors" and not "practical electronics for engineers and mathematicians".

I was really looking for a book that explored simple questions like: "How does one use a transistor?", "How do I prevent myself from frying a bunch of microcontroller boards?" or "How do I use an oscilloscope?". This book answers these basic questions for people who have no practical electronics experience (although they may have theoretical experience).

30 years ago I was an electronics tech. Then programmer. now inventor.
I checked out the first edition at the library and was so impressed with
it that I got online and bought the second edition. It is absolutely
great! I'm looking for breadth, not some full-of-himself-professors
rambling about some nit pick point. This book delivers. The only
omissions I have found so far (not errors) is the omission of Diffused
channel FET's (which operate in both enhancement mode AND depletion mode)
which is a common omission among other books, and the omission of optical
encoders. This is a book about the practical part of electronics, not the theoretical stuff that puts you to sleep. Most books that include
the color codes stop at four band. I have seen more bands too often to
count with no explanation of what the other bands are for. This book
explains four bands, two varieties fo five band and six bands before
you even get to the copyright page!

There is a rule among publishers: "don't include too much information
or you won't have anything to write about in your second book". This is
the second author that I found to violate that rule. (the first author
is the one who told me about the rule).

If you are learning to be an engineer, this may not be your book. If
you are trying to design something. This is where to put your money.

My title says it all. To the author: this is a great book, but there are still some gotchas. Please post an errata page.