MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery Reviews
October 22, 2010 by admin
MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
- ISBN13: 9780596153748
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
“This is teaching at its best!”
–Hans Camenzind, inventor of the 555 timer (the world’s most successful integrated circuit), and author of Much Ado About Almost Nothing: Man’s Encounter with the Electron (Booklocker.com)
“A fabulous book: well written, well paced, fun, and informative. I also love the sense of humor. It’s very good at disarming the fear. And it’s gorgeous. I’ll be recommending this book highly.”
–Tom Igoe, author of Physical Computing and Making Things Talk
Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? With Make: Electronics, you’ll start working on real projects as soon as you crack open the book. Explore all of the key components and essential principles through a series of fascinating experiments. You’ll build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them!
Build working devices, from simple to complex You’ll start with the basics and then move on to more complicated projects. Go from switching circuits to integrated circuits, and from simple alarms to programmable microcontrollers. Step-by-step instructions and more than 500 full-color photographs and illustrations will help you use — and understand — electronics concepts and techniques.
- Discover by breaking things: experiment with components and learn from failure
- Set up a tricked-out project space: make a work area at home, equipped with the tools and parts you’ll need
- Learn about key electronic components and their functions within a circuit
- Create an intrusion alarm, holiday lights, wearable electronic jewelry, audio processors, a reflex tester, and a combination lock
- Build an autonomous robot cart that can sense its environment and avoid obstacles
- Get clear, easy-to-understand explanations of what you’re doing and why
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(out of 22 reviews)
List Price: $ 34.99
Price: $ 20.41
Review by R. Severson for MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
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I recommend this book strongly for anyone just starting out in electronics. Many other books introduce the subject of electronics by talking about the early discoveries concerning amber rods, Leyden jars, and static electricity. This book dives right in using parts that you can pick up at a local Radio Shack, or can easily order on-line. And it uses a fun almost playful approach to experimentation. Your first experiment involves touching a battery to your tongue! Man, that will either annoy you into quitting or completely intrigue you into learning more. My bet is it will spark (pun intended) your interest and excitement as it leaves you with a funny metallic taste.
This is exactly the hands-on approach that I was looking for to teach my son. Something that he can read on his own, or read with me. Easy experimentation, clear steps, good photography. No wondering if any of the experiments will fail because they were written only/mainly to think about. These were all written to be DONE by the reader. Getting into the nitty-gritty of learning is easy when you can actively experiment as you learn.
Highly recommended as a modern first book for electronics.
Review by Ira Laefsky for MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
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Charles Platt is a widely published science fiction author, electronics and bioscience consultant and superior educator. This is a guidebook to Electronics worthy of Heathkit in its glory days. It offers a completely hands-on and hands dirty approach including examining and pushing components beyond their limits, and assembling and testing all of the topics you study in the handbook. The pedagogy is clear and succinct. Beautiful full-color illustrations show you how to do “it” and to fully know what to expect on your workbench. Because all concepts are conveyed in this excellent hands-on experimental approach some topics are presented in a different order than that experienced with a conventional introductory electronics textbook. For example, wave shaping based upon 555-timer pulses is fully illustrated, as well as the digital electronics necessary to construct electronic dice, and to experiment with microcontrollers, but operational amplifiers and active filters are omitted in this experimental handbook.
This is a superb introduction to electronics, which will provide the conceptual and experimental bench skills to yield a lifetime of enjoyment.
Review by D. Thomas for MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
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I can’t say enough good things about this book! I learned more in the first 20 minutes with this book than I did after pouring through several other “electronics basics” books for countless hours.
Instead of starting with math and theory and circuit analysis, this book uses hands on exercises and explains the theories in very easy to understand language and metaphors. But, it still does then circle back to explain the math and theory upon which the practical examples are based.
I’m only about 1/3rd of the way through the book and projects, but I’m excited to get to the point of using IC’s. I’ve browsed ahead enough to be confident that I’m going to be able to put execute on these projects and then put this knowledge to good use.
I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to do some tinkering with electronics of any sort. Personally, I’m experimenting with data acquisition systems in a race car, and I’d like to be able to create and wire up my own sensors instead of being limited to the plug-and-play variety that are very expensive. I believe that this book will get me enough of the basics so that I can tackle these projects. Or, at the very least, I’ll be able to intelligently engage my EE friends for help!
Review by Jeffrey M. Osier-Mixon for MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
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O’Reilly has been churning out technical literature of unbeatable quality for as long as there has been a real IT industry. In recent years, they have branched into hobbyist and educational material, particularly including the Make series of periodicals and books that has not only reignited numerous hobbyist markets but also spawned its own set of conferences, the Maker Faires. DIY is enjoying a renaissance, and Make is at the forefront. I love pretty much everything about Make, but one of the most recent books under the Make brand exceeds even the high bar they have already set for themselves. I am referring to Charles Platt’s Make:Electronics, which I have finally managed to pry from my 12-year-old’s eyeballs long enough to review.
I was sort of obsessed with electronics when I was a kid. I read anything I could get my hands on, which unfortunately ended up being the Radio Shack catalog and a set of musty library books that seemed as though they were written in a foreign language. I pored over schematics and took things apart, much to my parents’ dismay, in a vain effort to figure out just what made all those wires and components tick. I would have to say that, overall, I failed. I did manage to occasionally fix broken radios and such, but it was always by luck in finding a loose connection or a physically broken component. I simply didn’t understand what all the little pieces did individually, so it was impossible to fathom what they did in concert.
Eventually I turned 16 and migrated to cars, which had actual moving parts, but a little part of me always pined to know how the solid state stuff worked. I took enough basic electrical engineering classes in college to gain a basic, dry understanding what resistors and capacitors and transistors were, but the magic of them was gone and I ended up in computer science instead, learning software algorithms instead of electrical traces. I still kept an eye out, but every electronics book I found frustrated me by its complexity, vagueness, and punishing attention to mathematics–I actually like math and I couldn’t get through these books. I know from talking to others that I am not the only propellerhead with this experience.
When I encountered Make:Electronics in January, I figured it was yet another in the long series of confusing, math-heavy electronics books that had so thoroughly quenched my fiery interest in the subject.
I could not have been more wrong.
Make:Electronics is the book every single propellerhead wishes that they had had when they were 12 years old. Or any age. I’m not kidding. This book is the most approachable primer to electronic components and circuits that I have ever read, and I have read a LOT of them. It is friendly, well paced, full of good illustrations, and full of well-grounded metaphors that bring each component to life. I can honestly say that I never quite understood how capacitors worked until I read that section in this book, and now I will never forget.
This information is all packaged in the wonderful Make philosophy that breaking things (ok, small, easily replaced things) is a good way to learn about them, and indeed the book contains vivid instructions for burning up one battery and licking another, for “broiling” an LED, and for performing several other “dangerous” or destructive tasks in a controlled way that enables you to actually see what is happening. These are all things that I had to discover for myself, but with no one watching over my shoulder to explain what was going on I ended up discovering them repeatedly and wastefully. The book’s subtitle is “Learning by Discovery”, although what I found most satisfying was that the discovery was accompanied by friendly instruction.
Perhaps the most important feature of this book is the obvious love and almost childlike fascination that Charles Platt brings to the text. Platt is a science fiction author as well as a contributing editor to Wired and an important interviewer of other authors. Platt’s writing skill is obvious, but more obvious to me at least is his desire to teach, and his joy in doing so. That joy leaks out of every page and it is utterly infectious.
In short, Make:Electronics is a wonderful book that should be required reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in the subject. In fact, it should be the first and possibly the only reading you do, at least until Charles Platt writes another one. I have never written a book review this positive, but I honestly can’t say enough good things about it.
Review by Jack G. Atkinson Jr. for MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
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Here am I, over 30 with a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. I pick up this book because one day I would like to teach my son electronics, and before that teach some homeschool classes in my area on electronics. I was completely amazed at how well this book is laid out for teaching someone new to electronics! I remember my earlier days in junior high when my techie granddad gave me an electronic kit that sat on my shelf collecting dust, because the manual was just awful. I sure wish I had this book back then! I would have also have made a great introductory electronics class in college, instead of all that boring theory the professor droned on and on about all day then go to lab and stare at the breadboard. I made straight A’s in those early classes, but not very confidently and no thanks to the professor.
The books does a wonderful job of building upon concepts and moving onto the next without jumping too far out ahead. It has some nice historical asides in the sidebars about inventors and scientists for a special touch. The downside is getting all the parts for the experiments, so I recommend you cough up the dough to get the Maker’s kits that go with the lessons if you don’t want to spend a lot of time ordering and searching. However, ordering and searching for those parts is another education in itself, because one must eventually learn to acquire these items if they want to do more electronics work in the future.
Overall, this book is worth the money!