Practical Electronics for Inventors 3rd Edition

I teach an introductory class in electronics at a small university. The class is intended for scientists, not electrical engineers; so the emphasis is on basic knowledge, practical troubleshooting skills, and design. I've used the Second Edition of this book a number of times with some satisfaction simply because the book covered most of what I needed. It was a great reference book for just about anything someone would want to know about electronics.However, there were some notable gaps in the Second Edition that I typically teach in an electronics class; specifically, I teach a section on transducers and microcontrollers. With the Third Edition, there are new sections on sensors (transducers) and microcontrollers, and now this book has everything in it that I could possibly want to teach. I've been using the Arduino for class the last couple of years because most scientists would use a microcontroller to design a piece of equipment instead of discrete gates and logic chips. So with these new additions, I cannot imagine any other book that would be needed for a class. So from this point forward, I will be using this book for EVERY electronics class that I teach.The detail in the book is in-depth enough for folks who want to know how everything works, BUT the person who wants to skip past the theory can certainly do that and STILL learn a lot from this book. As I teach, I tend to skip around within the book to cover what is important to me. The chapters are designed to be somewhat modular; for instance, I can teach the basics of analog electronics and transistors and then move to microcontrollers without necessarily having to spend a lot of time time on discrete logic chips.There are lots of illustrations and graphs; so those who need to see something to understand it will be pleased. There is also a lot of detail on practical things like motors that generally are NOT in an electronics book.The sections on household electricity are excellent and very useful, since some equipment/inventions would require mains power. So knowing how to be safe around it and how to use it properly is important.I haven't read every single page yet and marked it up. In a book this size, I am sure there will be some typographical errors along the way and maybe even a mistake or two in explaining something. But I would still say this book is the BEST practical book on electronics out there. Kudos to Mr Scherz and Dr. Monk. You've taken an excellent book and modernized it in a great way for the current day.In short, for a 1000 page book, anyone who buys this is getting a bargain. It's the BEST.

I work in RF electronics and packet radio transmission and this book is now used to supplement a few gray areas and enhance my knowledge...What I love about this book and what sets it different from other books is the decision by the author to not only involve minute details about how capacitors and inductors work, but also illustrate in 3d like substance what these electrons actually do under the influence of voltage potentials, timings and other things...The effort put into this book by the authors is just monumental...These are not 2d drawings with meaningless text attached, but actually problems that are meticulously worked out to minute detail and presented in a juicy 3d representation...I never knew I could learn so much details about coils, magnetism, flux lines, stray capacitance and resistance (parasitics), inductance, flux mechanisms, permeability of core material, air coils, toroids with various AL indexes of every fashion are all discussed with worked out problems in the book...This author is not only one of the non-lazy, I'm so smart so go figure it yourself author that copies irrelevant integration formulas from other books, but by simplifying complicated terminology, also manages to take you on a trip of the mind that goes beyond understanding the fundamentals and continuously engages and enhances your knowledge spectrum by continuously also stimulating your interest and sometimes refreshing your memory on some of the gray areas with ease and substance...Can this book ever be outdone? I'm quarter of the way through it and I am insanely grateful to this author! Things have become so much more clear! Next book he puts out...I'm getting it without even looking at the reviews!

This review is based on my completing the first 251 pages (Chapter 2: Theory). I've browsed the rest of the book and expect the following review will hold true as I progress through it the remainder.TL;DR summary: A solid tutorial and reference for a serious learner that occupies a needed niche between the "for dummies" and college text categories.Thiry years ago, I took two years of electircal engineering in collage before switching to computer science. While I'm a "software guy," I still get my hands dirty interfacing with hardware and simple design. I purchased this book in the hopes that I could fortify my knowledge. Thus far this book has been a perfect mix of theory and practice for my reeducation. The authors give enough physics to understand the principles at work without getting lost in details. Being a book with the word "practical" in the title, it touches on real-world variations from theory that one will likely encounter.There are ample illustrations of principles and problems to work through with answers to let one check their understanding. I recommend one take the time to work through the problems. (If one has basic electronic tesst equipment, I also recommend building some of these simple circuits and fiddling with them to see them in action.)The book doesn't shy away from the mathematics, but the authors don't assume that the reader is a mathematician.With a little persaverance one could start from scratch and get up to speed on basic electornics.