Customer Reviews

The Science of Radio: With MATLAB and Electronics Workbench Demonstrations, 2nd Edition

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

 

 

I really enjoyed this book that ranks with some of the finest technical books I have read. This book should be found along side of The Feynman Lectures on Physics and Terman's Electronic and Radio Engineering. Nahin offers an interesting and readable discussion about the basis of radio communications from a historical vantage point of someone who grew up to witness the end of the golden age of radio. He gives the reader a good, readable introduction to such things as Fourier analylsis, Hartley tranforms, vacuum tube technology, etc. In an effort to keep the book simple, author Paul Nahin did not include any discussion of semiconductor technology. I hape that he will write about solid state physics in a later edition. (or perhaps in another book)

As a physics student and a beginner analog circuit designer with an interest in RF circuit design, I can highly recommend this book. Most books on RF design simply jump to quickly and assume a bunch of prerequsite knowledge, and also assume you don't need to understand the physics (or science) of what is going on, but only understand the models to be used to plug numbers into. I've had a hard time putting this book down, it is really great. It will definitely help you gain an intutive understanding of HOW IT ALL WORKS! Also, after reading all about spark radios, I discovered that my uncle was a spark radio operator in WWII! Now I really understand what he did!

I've never met a technical book as well-written as this one. Imagine what if Maxwell's Treatise had been written by himself in collaboration with Martin Gardner and ... Bill Bryson! Paul Nahin is a great writer, and I can only imagine how great a teacher he must be. I will buy every single book he writes. Don't be misled: this is a very serious book, and the pleasure of its reading comes from a very sound teaching philosophy (called top-down by Nahin) combined with a knack for history, which gives context to every topic. Look at the table of contents, and you will see that the author means business.

I have been a fan of Paul Nahin's writting since I came across his book an imaginary tale ... In this text he clearly describes the history as well as the EE of radio. It is an excellent book and I especially enjoyed the appendices and matlab and electronics workbench examples.

I have been a fan of Paul Nahin's writting since I came across his book an imaginary tale ... In this text he clearly describes the history as well as the EE of radio. It is an excellent book and I especially enjoyed the appendices and matlab and electronics workbench examples.

Its surprising that so few books are available covering this subject that has become so important.I enjoyed Nahin's book.It covers the history, better pre-history of radio and combines it with quite a lot of theory.But there's the rub.The book deals with a very specific part of radio history a part that has long since become of lttle other than academic interest.True Nahin does this well with plenty of wit and style.
The first part of Nahin's book deals with theeory earliest radios that were esentialy TRF receivers.Such technology has not existed since the 30's of the last century.Spark transiters are an even greater curisity.He then develops much of the mathematics that underpins these ideas.

A very good read for all those who love both mathematics and the theory and history of radio.
However, its a pity Nahin does not continue to write a true history of radio: FM,AM superhetrodyne, Synthesizers.There a lot of material for the professor including the math he so loves. I'm waiting...

Mr.Nahin, could you please write more books like this... ?

I got this book in the hopes of understanding the science of radio. However, the book is very strange. It is part textbook, part amateur history, part popularization.

In the end what it lacks is any coherent overview of how radio actually works. It could benefit greatly from an overview summary chapter of this nature. Such a summary could explain in detail how all the apparent wanderings and diversions throughout the book fit into a coherent picture. As it is, the text wanders through the history of radio and delves into a bunch of historical oddities not used since the 1930s.

The text is full of strange digressions often, for example, attacking Marconi. Then suddenly the author seems to remember he is supposed to be explaining the "science" of radio, so he throws out a bunch of poorly explained equations.

The book is also disorganized, partly due to the digressions. Here is an example, in chapter 5, we are supposed to be told how a simple crystal receiver works. He shows the circuit diagram straight off. Then he wanders into a 4 page diatribe about Marconi. Oh, then he remembers the circuit: "Maximum voltage develops across the circuit when it is tuned to match the resonant frequency of the arriving signal". Huh?? What do you mean , tuned, how is it tuned? Isn't that exactly what you were supposed to be explaining? This little "detail" is left out.

Now, I know that it is tuned by a variable capacitor. But he doesn't even mention this! Apparently you are supposed to already know what the circuit diagrams mean, and therefore what the circuit components do.. if so what is this book providing? If you know this stuff, he adds little. If you don't know it, he doesn't explain enough.

I also already know,in an amateur's sense, that the differential equation for the RLC circuit in chapter 4 is the same as the simple harmonic motion equation-- this helped me follow what the heck he was suddenly talking about when he dumped a huge pile of equation at the start of chapter 4. But, it was very poorly done. It assumed you knew what Kirchoff's laws were (no review) , what a capacitor and inductor do...again if you knew all that what would this book add? He constantly leaves out anything he assumes you should know but would be helpful to explain the background of what he is saying (much more helpful than ramblings on obscure century old patents).

The later book is filled with a bunch of math that I haven't gotten to yet. However, I expect it would mostly be of interest to Electrical engineers...not your average person (who does in fact know calculus and the other things he mentions) who really would like a clear explanation of how radio works.

That definitely is NOT what this book provides.

Nahin's book could be described as a hybrid between a popularization and a textbook. The popularization aspect is because he uses an informal conversational style. He combines this with many historical asides and various curiosities of the subject. There is a lot of detail about early radio, both historically and technically. It goes all the way from spark coil transmitters through FM. It also has some old cartoon ads from 40s and 50s magazines advertising correspondence courses in radio & tv repair. That was part of the post WWII environment for self employed radio and tv repairmen. (That has largely disappeared with throw-away electronics.) It's nostalgic for those who remember.

As a textbook, it has serious mathematics, including Fourier series and transforms, Dirac functions, convolution, and much else. He is careful to show where derivations are not completely rigorous (and engineering math usually is not, at least by the standards of "pure" mathematicians). There are extensive appendices which further flesh out the mathematics. He goes through a lot of mathematical analysis of modulation and demodulation schemes, including AM, SSB, FM, QAM, plus many other topics. If you ever wondered what a QAM tuner is (as in your tv set), this will explain it clearly on a mathematical level. An additional aspect that makes it somewhat like a textbook is that there are a lot of exercises following each section, as well as extensive references. I would say, realistically, one should have had at least a good college calculus course to fully appreciate the book. Overall it is a unique book-I have never seen one quite like it. It's fun and engaging, and can be appreciated on several levels.

This is a very good book as explained by other reviewers. However, I
cannot give it five stars for the following reasons
1) It has what I believe is a serious error, in a crucial part. The first
equation on page 157 is the first step to explain why the spark-gap
transmitter scatter electromagnetic energy all across the spectrum.
However, it does not make sense to me. Perhaps I misunderstood the explanation of the spark gap oscillator given in figure 4.3 on page 45. If I understood correctly the "spark gap" oscillators there are four times are involved. The most important is the time interval T that is mechanically given by relay r. It is the interval during which relay r , opens, closes and then opens again.
This time interval is the period of the signal but should not be in the
equation on page 157. If asked, I can send a PDF file of the correct
equation by e-mail
2)The comments about science-fiction films, scattered thru out the book,
are a bit annoying. Of course, you can skip those comments easily, but
they are annoying anyway.