Practical Electronics: A Self-Teaching Guide

Learn practical electronics at your own pace

What is a semiconductor? How do you lay out circuits to avoid noise and interference? What do inductors and transformers have in common? How does a coaxial cable carry power to an antenna? With Practical Electronics: A Self-Teaching Guide, you'll discover the answers to these questions and many more about the basics of electricity and electronic components.

Thoroughly researched for our digital age, this easy-to-use guide makes familiar the workings of transistors, capacitors, diodes, resistors, integrated circuits, and more. Electronics expert Ralph Morrison starts you off with two of the simplest electronic components, showing you how to combine them into circuits and then add more components to create more complex circuits. He includes detailed "learning circuits," which are electronic circuits you can build yourself, even if you have had no prior electronics experience. The clearly structured format of Practical Electronics makes it fully accessible, providing an easily understood, comprehensive overview for everyone from the student to the engineer to the hobbyist.

Like all Self-Teaching Guides, Practical Electronics allows you to build gradually on what you have learned-at your own pace. Questions and self-tests reinforce the information in each chapter and allow you to skip ahead or focus on specific areas of concern. Packed with useful, up-to-date information, this clear, concise volume is a valuable learning tool and reference source for anyone who wants to improve his or her understanding of basic electronics.

RALPH MORRISON is a consultant and lecturer in the area of electronics and interference control. He has more than thirty years of design and consulting experience, and was president of Instrum, Inc., for more than a decade. Morrison has authored Electricity: A Self-Teaching Guide; The Fields of Electronics: Understanding Electronics Using Basic Physics; Grounding and Shielding Techniques, Fourth Edition; Noise and Other Interfering Signals; Grounding and Shielding in Facilities; and Solving Interference Problems in Electronics, all published by Wiley.

List of the Learning Circuits.
A Note to the Reader.
1. Resistors, Capacitors, and Voltage.
2. Inductors, Transformers, and Resonance.
3. Introduction to Semiconductors.
4. More Semiconductor Circuits.
5. Feedback and IC Amplifiers.
6. IC Applications.
7. Circuit Construction, Radiation, and Interference.
8. A Review of Basic Electrical Concepts.
Appendix I: Preparing to Use the Learning Circuits.
Appendix II: Basic Algebra.
Index.