is it possible to learn electronics through self study?

I personally believe it is possible to learn electronics through self study, but it is a lot harder to do so on one's own. I taught myself the fundamentals while in high school (where there was no electronics course at he time) and then went to a trade school to get the piece of paper that said I knew something, and found that having a good teacher gave me a much better "big picture" view of how it all worked together. For myself, would recommend Grob's Basic Electronics for the fundamentals, and Electronic Principles by Malvino for the more advanced topics (like transistor biasing, etc.) Post your questions, and someone will at least try to answer them for you. And the net is full of information, you just have to ask the right questions. Google is your friend there.

Dave

Get a copy of "The Art of Electronics" and its companion "Student Manual for The Art of Electronics." Read the main text, work through the exercises in the student manual.

You'll need access to some parts and test equipment. You can use SPICE to simulate some things and as a pseudo test and measurement environment but you'll need to build some real circuits as well.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

--- Google is also your friend WRT to USENET posting conventions.

From:

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In short, don't top post.

JF

Try this url, let us know what you think. I don't remember who originally posted that link - but whoever it is should get the thanks.

Ed

Apologies. Will try to remember, and not repeat.

Hope this is better...

Thanks.

Dave

Prabu wrote in news:47cfc955-a685-4735-b642- snipped-for-privacy@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com:

FWIW, that's what I've been trying to do.

In th eend, it mainyl depends upon one's aptitude. My strong aptitudes are mostly right-brain/conceptual-analytical/visual, whereas my weakest point has always been Math and related linear-logical subjects.

There are entire books on-line - I also bought a couple - "Practical Electronics for Inventors" is IMO great! I still needed to fill in a bit with other references, including my old Physics text from University (yup, I took 101 and 102 - but stank at it) but the latter was because PEfI was confusing re: Capacitors.

One of the most confusing thing is that different book use different symbols for some things - most common seems to be "E" versus "V" for Volts, but the more egregious IMO is C sometimes meaning "capacitance" and sometimes meaning "charge".

You also have to keep track, in the formulae, of those pesky prefixes, such as micro-, milli-, mega-, and so on.

I've been finding it useful to write up my own "book" or notes, collecting all the various formulae, because the books don't necessarily do a great job of relating one section with another and explaining how it all fits together.

OTOH, unilke me!, people with an aptitude for electronics can "see" in their heads how it all fits together. So if you are like that, self-teaching shouldn't be at all bad.

In case you're wondering, I'm teaching myself becuase i have one specific thing I want to do - I'm very "goal-oriented" in that I tend to learn what I need to so as to do something sepcific, make a specific item/project. THat probalby also makes it more difficult, because I don't have the patience to "start from the beginning and learn it all through". If you have a generalized interest in electronics itself, that, like natural aptitude for math-related topics, will also make it easier.

In the meantime, try the links below as a starting-point.

HTH!

- Kris

Best:

Alternately, you can start here (the links seem to work better for me) D:\\ELECTRONICS_4_Solar\\Volume I - DC All About Circuits.htm (Wikipedia also has links and references that you can follow)

More decent links:

m ((you can DL a pdf called "What is a Capacitor?", and IIRC, some other stuff as well))

Videos:

(a videotaped lecture - there are links to subsequent lectures in the YouTube "related vids" column to the lower right) More videotaped lectures - this time, from MIT

Also, Google is your friend: Google the following:

"Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series" - you can downloasd the PDF file

"Electricity and Magnetism" by Benjamin Crowell (another PDF)

Kris Krieger wrote in news:Xns9BD787DDC75ACmeadowmuffin@216.168.3.70:

ERROR: in the lins at the end, where I said "Alternately...", I linked to the pages I'd saved, not to the online site! OOPS! But the first link works ;)

- Kris

Thanks for all.

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has

Sometimes you really do need to take a class. I was fine at C programming (self taught from books, after taking a Pascal class) but I just couldn't understand C++ from books. Then I took a class. An analogy: C is like walking into a jewelry store, taking what you like, and leaving the cash on the counter. C++ is like walking into a jewelry store, asking the clerk for a ring, the clerk takes the ring out of the locked case, then you pay for it. Slower, less efficient, but more security. Ah! Now I get it.

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I thought the convention for charge was "Q".

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So true. I did the exact same thing when studying for my licensing exam (not in electronics).

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Regards,

Michael