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Learning the art of electronics : a hands-on lab course
Hayes T., Horowitz P., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2016. Type: Book (9780521177238)
Date Reviewed: Sep 19 2017

The book is exactly what the title promises: a very hands-on approach to electronics design, assembly, and testing. It began as the handbook for a long-running Harvard class taught by the authors. They have used it in various formats: a one-semester undergraduate class, a full-year night school program, and in summer school. It is also suitable for self-education by motivated tinkerers and hobbyists, down to the high school level.

It is charming, too. The tone is light and many of the illustrations are hand drawn. The overview begins with a truly wonderful New Yorker cartoon, drawn by Saul Steinberg in 1979. The cartoon itself is almost worth the price of the book.

The book consists of 25 sections, corresponding to that many classes and lab sessions. Each section includes an explanatory chapter, a lab assignment with worked examples, and supplementary notes. The full book comes in at over 1100 pages.

The text is primarily practical, not theoretical. Even when presenting theory, it is grounded in real examples. The first chapter is quick to point out that even Ohm’s law is not accurate, per se, for most real devices. (For example, a light bulb filament’s resistance changes as it is heated by the flow of current.)

The first section starts with the basics of Ohm’s law and Thévenin equivalents, and includes an introduction to common lab tools including the oscilloscope. It also repeatedly highlights the importance of intelligent estimation--a point so often missed by novices.

The remaining sections discuss resistor-capacitor (RC) circuits, diodes, transistors, op-amps, and voltage regulators, before concluding the analog half of the book with sections on metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) and an audio project.

The book then segues into digital circuits, covering logic gates and medium-scale integration (MSI) chips, memory, phase-locked loops (PLLs), and analog/digital conversion.

Then, jumping up a level of abstraction, the remainder of the book dives into microcontrollers. This is followed by appendices that look at tooling and real-world issues, including logic compilers, transmission lines, and where to purchase parts.

Surprisingly for a book published today, there is no discussion of Arduino. The authors stop at around the 8051 microcontroller. I would have liked to see a couple of labs integrating Arduino into electronic projects. But, given the limitations of page counts and semester weeks, I suppose the authors had to pick a stopping point.

In summary, I highly recommend this book, both for classroom use and for self-education. One caveat: it covers a lot of material. Without a good instructor at hand, it will take considerable time and motivation to work through this book alone.

More reviews about this item: Amazon

Reviewer:  David Goldfarb Review #: CR145548 (1711-0720)
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