Electronics Expertise Fundamentals: Typical Circulate Model

Far Superior to What I Had at Vanderbilt University
This is the textbook for my son, Bobby who plans to be an Electrical Engineer hopefully from Georgia Tech in the next few years. Currently he is working on his basic core subjects and this is a 8 hour course taught at Georgia Middle Technical College in Kathleen, Ga.. The lectures and labs are 3 hours per day for 5 days a week and this textbook appears to cover the subject well.Back in the fall of 1975 I had the misfortune of taking a 2nd semester Physics course (electricity and magnetism) from a “weeder” professor from M.I.T. who then taught Engineering Physics II at Vanderbilt University. If his job was to weed young people out of physics then he did his job in a superb fashion. Before taking the Vandy class physics was my favorite subject; after this fall semester of Physics II with the M.I.T. professor I could not stand physics. Such was the transition in my outlook towards the subject after this weeder course. He made the class miserable. Looking back with more experience from other better teachers I understand why I hated Physics II as it was taught by Professor M.I.T.. For one thing we had a poor textbook that contained many differential equations with such things as triple integrations. Since I was only up to my 2nd course in Calculus I could only stare in bewilderment at the “latin and greek” hieroglyphics and scratch my head as to their meaning. The pace was extremely fast and we got both circuit analysis of series type and parrallel type together. They should not be taught together. And before that we got the chapter dealing with magnetism. The professor would spend the whole lecture time deriving equations and not explaning how to systematically attack practical problems.On our homework we had to do many proofs which most of us didn’t have a clue. Being Vanderbilt students with a reputation for being hard workers we knew we had our hands full so we would meet in my room to try to “divide and conquer” the subject matter. This approach did not work; it kicked our butt. There were 5 of us on the undergraduate study team and we were completely stumped on the proofs. We would go from problem to problem and ask ourselves,” Anybody got a clue what the hell they are asking ?” After a few minutes of staring at the problems we come back and say……. “Let’s go to the next one and see if we can solve that problem”. If the problem was about a concrete real world problem we could grasp we could usually solve it but if it was a problem like “What is the mathematical basis for Gauss’s law?” we were totally without a clue.This book by Robert T. Paynter and B.J. Toby Boydell is different. These authors know what they are doing. The book is well laid out and separates the series and parrallel circuit theory and analysis with straight forward and understandable explanations. Problems start simple and then get more challenging in a linear fashion as you expect from someone who knows how to teach effectively. No curve ball proofs for egg-head PhD candidate wannabe’s here. Just straight forward real world problems that start simple and get progressivley more challenging. Also lots of problems to allow the student to get the feel of the numbers. That is the key to learning math and science. You must do lots and lots of problems until “it clicks”. Also the chapters are laid out with decent amount of information without overwhelming the student. It is very straight forward and to the point. Important topics are highlighted and important nuances are italicized as if to say “Hey this is counter-intuitive, but it will bite you in the butt if you don’t know it, so pay attention !”This is a heavy book. Don’t drop it on your toe or you will need an ambulance. Give yourself lots of time to outline the chapters and then work the problems in a systematic way. You will need probably 12 – 16 hours a week to get the chapters down if you have a test per week per chapter. Yeah this is not a class you can show up, sleep during the lecture and get an A you need to go into the lecture hall like you own the place or this class will eat you alive even if you have a “good” teacher. This physics is not for the faint-hearted; you need to be agressive and be willing to do what it takes to learn this or you will flunk this course. This is science and engineering and only two types of people survive – “The hard worker or the smart person”. If you are not either of these types of people go somewhere else and major in Fine Arts or Politcal Science. You will not survive here if you are lazy. If you are a hard working student and like physics and want to learn from a great teaching textbook this is the book for you. Good luck on your future engineering and science career. I am a Chief Engineer in Aerospace and this is the foundation course for anyone who likes this type of study.

Out of order pages
I would suggest not buying this book new. I received two copies of this book, and both had out of order pages making the book very hard to read. I talked with another one of my classmates, and his book, that he bought directly from Pearson, was also out of order. It looks like there was an issue with this recent print at Pearson.

I mean, it’s a text book.
Price was good in comparison to anywhere else I found it. Not sure what I’ll be able to do with it after the class is over though.

ok
ok

It is in good condition for the price , very happy 👍👍👍

good condition