Talk:Electronics/Archive01

'''DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.'''

This archive page covers approximately the dates between March 2004 and early June 2005.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying the section you are replying to if necessary. (See How to archive a talk page.)

Please add new archivals to Talk:Electronics/Archive02. Thank you. Omegatron 16:47, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Archive
This Talk page Module was too long and so I split it into 2 pages. The first half remains here. The second half was moved to Talk Electronics 2. I you don't like what I did, you can re-unite them, but then you get a page which is excessively long again. I don't suggest re-uniting them until it is decided what to delete. H Padleckas 23:25, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Let's combine them back together and create an archive for the old discussions, as is normally done on big talk pages on wikipedia. - Omegatron 19:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Should this be on two separate pages? That seems strange to me.  Maybe just archive the old discussions or combine them all on this page. - Omegatron 18:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Delete "talk" sections that no one has commented on in over 6 months old -- move signed comments them to the user's talk page, delete anonymous comments outright. OK ? --DavidCary 07:00, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Just archive them normally. - Omegatron 19:07, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Foreword
Couldn't the three foreword sections be combined into one "article"? - Omegatron 15:56, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree. These three sections are very short - might as well combine them into one "Forward" module.  H Padleckas 19:37, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Contributing
Hi, since you're a DSP engineer, perhaps you would be interested in helping out with the Electronics wiki-textbook. http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Electronics


 * Yes, I would love to. How do I start?  I am not too familiar with Wikibooks - Omegatron 20:48, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

A starter would be grabbing some articles from wikipedia and modifying them to be an educational text. I already started a basic lesson on RC circuits so far. The aim of this text is to educate someone with no previous experience in electronics to a one or two year level.

As for editing, wikibooks are almost exactly the same as editing wikipedia articles. The only difference is the structure of the books and their modules, but most of the required chapters and topics are set up. If you have any more things that you think should be covered, by all means add them to the main page of the textbook, then we can begin fleshing out the details. oh, and by the way, do you have a template you use for your electronics diagrams? It would be good if we could have a template, which we could use to standardize all our circuit diagrams. - Anonymous Contributer, 22:58, Mar 19, 2004 (GMT)


 * I don't have a template for them. Here is a short description and some examples: Wikipedia:user:Omegatron


 * I have been using Arial size 10 (and then size 9 dropped down 3 pixels for the subscripts), but that could be made prettier. There is no template for how the labels are arranged, etc. but there could be.  I often edit the diagrams from Klunky so that they are more compact and easy to read.  Do you have any suggestions for them?  I would love some feedback.


 * Just try to remember what it was like when you first learned electronics and what you had trouble with. I tried to teach myself electronics several times when I was in elementary/high school, and never had much luck until college.  I will try to write this like the book I wish I had at the time.  Some misconceptions I had:

(see below.)


 * just a few. :-)  what are the differences to wikipedia?  obviously you don't make links to other encyclopedia articles.  do you include external links or is it meant to be like a printable standalone book? - Omegatron 15:56, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * You can include links to other book pages. For the most part, the wikibooks project is the exact same format as the wikipedia with only minor changes. For instance, all the electronics articles are written with names of Electronics/Pie for instance. Make sure you do that, because if we just used standard words, there could be crossing over of a topic. Besides that, add articles and edit mine without mercy! - Alex S 18:00, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Table of Contents
Do you want to add a table of contents to each page, as in:

http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Manual_of_Style#Tables_of_Contents

It should at least have a back button at the bottom of each page or something.

>>I think that the current TOC for each page works good enough. I don't think there's a need for another TOC on the title page, that can be seen in one screen-viewing...

Who is working on this book? It looks like it is just Alex. - Omegatron 19:02, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure some people from wikipedia would be interested. We just need to messag e them to get their attention.


 * Umm .. well, I went ahead and made a TOC for the book. To link into it just include this code at the top of each page: I did so on a couple of pages but did not go though each page to add the code. --Karl Wick

TOC
Hmm... I started adding TOC to each page, and realized that the pages already have titles at the top.


 * 1) Do we want redundant titles? As in Electronics/Diodes
 * 2) Is there a way to make TOC default on each page like the titles?


 * I don't get the point of the TOC. At the bottom and top of the pages. Why do we need those if any browser you use has a back button? If someone is reading about diodes, will they want to click up on the TOC and go read up on the section about static electricity? - Alex S


 * Having to use the back button is sometimes annoying. Some browsers don't go to the same place in the page when you press back, requiring you to scroll down to wherever you were to go to the next section.  Back-->Scroll/Find-->Click, just to go to the next section.  But yeah, I thought the TOC would have a link to each section, and maybe back and forward buttons (is that possible?), so you can just click on the next section in one click, which is conveniently located at the bottom of the page, which is where you are after reading that section.  This example is more what I was thinking:


 * Basic Concepts ? 1 - 2 - 3
 * DC Electronics ? 1 - 2 - 3
 * Chapter 3 ? 1 - 2 - 3

or


 * Basic Concepts ? Electrons - Static Electricity - Voltage and Current
 * DC Electronics ? Chap2Page1 - Chap2Page2 - Chap2Page3
 * Chapter 3 ? Chap3Page1 - Chap3Page2 - Chap3Page3

though this could get messy

- Omegatron


 * I say keep it simple for now. Those current TOCs dont really serve a purpose, and the most useful thing to have would be a 'next chapter' or 'previous chapter' button. But that isn't very feasable at the moment as we're just starting up the book. Should we remove the redundant TOCs?

- Alex S


 * The way they are now is basically useless, but a little better than just using the back button. I vote for a table like I included above.  Maybe we can make it even smaller, but it would serve kind of like next and previous section buttons.  who is the developer of wikibooks?  Maybe we can make forward and back buttons?  we can definitely just add them in by hand.  but automated would be better. - Omegatron

Also when you arrive at a page through another page through another page that you edited, etc etc and you want to go back to the electronics TOC, there is no easy way to get to it. - Omegatron 18:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I far prefer page names that describe what the page is about. If I want to read about electrons,


 * Basic Concepts ? Electrons - Static Electricity - Voltage and Current
 * tells me right where to click.
 * Links like


 * Chapter 3 ? Chap3Page1 - Chap3Page2 - Chap3Page3
 * are, in my opinion, useless.
 * --DavidCary 18:14, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. Did someone add links like that? - Omegatron 18:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes. Several other books have this unfortunate style. For example,
 * Electronics/History/Chapter 1
 * Electronics/History/Chapter 5
 * Geometry: Chapter 1: Section 1
 * Geometry: Chapter 6
 * Computer Science:Algorithms:Chapter 6
 * SA NC Doing Investigations:Chapter 10
 * European History:Chapter 2
 * Home Remedies/Chapter 2
 * Japanese History/Chapter 9

Is there a better place than "Talk:Electronics" for discussing how to name chapters in a wikibook ? -- --DavidCary 07:00, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * You mean Staff lounge? - Omegatron 19:07, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

''Do we want redundant titles? As in Electronics/Diodes?''

I don't know. I think it might be nifty if we eliminated some redundancy and had everyone focus on polishing one really, really good explanation of capacitors and inductors at capacitors and inductors. That one explanation would somehow be "included" in both the electronics textbook and the physics textbook. On the other hand, having independent pages in the electronics textbook and the physics textbook might let us focus on just the properties relevant to the particular subject we are studying. (In particular, when designing electronic circuits, we just care about the electrical properties at the terminals, the "imaginary impedance" stuff. If we want to learn details about how they work, how to make and modify them, then we need to learn the physics underlying them -- the electric field, the magnetic field, etc.) But I certainly don't think we need 5 different pages on capacitors:
 * Electronics/Capacitors,
 * Electronics/Capacitor Construction,
 * FHSST Physics Electronics:capacitive and inductive circuits,
 * Modern_Physics:Electromagnetism:Contents,
 * capacitor

--DavidCary 07:00, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Scope of Book
This is the second part of the Electronics book. It deals with topics that are related to Electronics but don't quite fit into an Electronics book. As this is the second part editors can stop showing restraint towards math. Long live Greek.

Cyberman: I would help on this wikibook except all of you have made it too physics intense. There isn't a basic setting. Right away people are thrown into physics.. jeeze people. This isn't a physics book, it should be an introduction into electronics, and then once you establish the basis of introduction, you can start laying on formulas and equations. I understand that physics is the hardcore study of electronics, but I think it should be more of a basic introduction, not intense.

A lot of the physics is covered in the physics textbooks.. Eh, I don't really know.

''It is true that these subjects are covered elsewhere, but this part of the book talks about them in terms of Electricity and Magnetism. A good example is Optics. Normally when people talk about Optics they talk about visible light. My question is how optics works throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum. For instance at higher frequencies light will destroy mirrors rather than being reflected by it.''



See, I was hoping to make more of a practical book about electronics and about the subject. Now it seems this book has become practically everything but? Hoped to cover things like design and understanding of electrical circuits and systems, etc. Your thoughts?

<Narrow the focus. There's a proposed physics with calculus that can cover the wider shores of EM. For this book, just stick to circuits; without much maths in the first half, with maths in the expanded section: resistance, capacitance, inductance, batteries and electrolysis, generators and motors, and semiconductors. Don't explain how semiconductors work, or details about magnetism; stick to what's need for studying circuits. Possibly a final chapter saying, without maths, 'This is how circuits fit into EM and beyond. Now go and read these other books'>

I agree with person. If we concentrate more on the field of ELECTRONICS and less on the field of ELECTRICITY, we should fare well with a good textbook. If a reader can design a radio transmitter or digital circuit by the end of the book, we can give our selves a pat on the back. However, learning how electron spin and the function of n-doped semiconductor materials only gets you so far.

This book seems to be getting a lot of information added to it that is really not too relevant to electronics. Table of chemicals, extensive frequency spectrum, history. If you want to change the name of the book to an Electromagnetics book or Physics of Electricity book, that is fine, but it seems there is too much information here for anyone to complete it in a reasonable amount of time and learn anything useful about practical electronic circuits in the process. I think they should know a little about the physics of charge, voltage, current first, so they have a foundation to understand what they are actually manipulating, and then learn how to apply them with the various components available and build circuits, then you can go into radio a bit, and in the process explain some electromagnetics, but leave the heavy electromagnetics and physics and chemistry for another book. The good thing about Wikipedia is that you can link to something without going in depth about it, and people who are interested can read, and people who are not interested don't have to. Let's not overburden the book with irrelevant information. Let's just link to it, and stick to the topic. Interested readers can find it themselves. Frankly, it is overwhelming, and I find it hard to help editing. - Omegatron 13:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous
Sound, Brief History of the Universe, The Solar System, Evolution of the Earth's Atmosphere, Earthquakes and natural disasters, and Global Warming?

As sections in the chapter Analog Circuits?

Stick to the topic, please!

Saying "the earth behaves like a conductor", "the ionosphere behaves like a conductor and can reflect radio waves" is plenty. There is no need at allllll to go into the details like this. That should be in a radio book anyway, not a basic electronics book. This is supposed to be a book about electronic circuits for beginners, not about life, the universe, and everything.

- Omegatron 21:09, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I will admit that my writing does suffer a bit from feature creep. I like to be through, and there are certain subjects that are not taught in school. I have moved the offending sections to the Expanded Edition. If you see anything else that seems excessive I will move it to the Expanded Edition.

Wanderer

Good compromise. I just don't see a point of including all kinds of unrelated information when you can just link to Wikipedia articles on each topic. - Omegatron 14:12, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Expanded edition is bad idea. We should put all thing in FULL edition. That's what books are.

Not true. Books 'don't' try to cover everything in one go, because people can't. Everything includes stuff for people 12 or younger, and the full rigors of QED. No twelve year old can possibly open a book, knowing nothing, and learn QED in a few weeks. Nor will anyone studying QED want to begin by reading about static electricity. They already know that.

Textbooks are aimed at specific targets, 12-16,16-18, undergraduate, etc, which lets them make good assumptions about what the reader already know, and they only cover a limited range of topics, enough to help the reader onto the next stage.

We should do likewise.

This book can, as Wanderer said, cover Electronics with light maths, say 16-18, and the expanded edition cover topics just beyond that scope, including the full maths.

Similarly the expanded edition will also be of limited scope, stopping short of QED. A full account of that topic belongs in a quite different book, for people who've already read Quantum Mechanics and Undergraduate Calculus, among other prerequisites. Carandol

Road map
Anyway, does anyone else agree that this should have a charge and basic electron section? I don't want to go into crazy physics or anything, but we should teach about charge, electrons, holes, potentials, charge flow, etc. so that people understand what it is we are manipulating, what is being stored in a capacitor, etc. This was my original road map from the Talk:Electronics/Aim page:


 * Electricity
 * Charge
 * Voltage
 * Current
 * Resistance
 * Ideal circuits & real circuits (and a description of the difference between schematics that just show wiring between real components, and schematics which show the ideal functioning of components)
 * Ideal voltage and current sources
 * Ideal nodes and meshes
 * Capacitors
 * Inductors
 * Introduce magnetism here or in the electricity section?
 * Transformers
 * Controlled voltage and current sources
 * Other types of components

...

How does this compare with what other people are thinking? I see the charge section got removed to the expanded edition... - Omegatron 01:26, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I definitely agree on this. Perhaps a section called 'Basic Electricity Concepts' or something similar could cover charge, current, and voltage. This section could be VERY basic however. One thing that should be stressed is that current is not just a magnitude, but also a direction (similar idea for voltage too!). I think that list should also contain 'Fundamental Laws' - Ohm, KVL, KCL. - maxpower 17:07, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Alright, so how are we going to do this? Having to cover the laws and all. I suggest we have two sections. One explaining the physics nature of charge and electron flow, then another explaining ohm's law, KVL, KCL. Then for more complex things, such as multiple current sources and capacitors and inductors, another chapter? or we will explain the behavior of the components in their own chapters?


 * For more complex things, there are a lot of different techniques/things to know. Nodal/Mesh analysis work well for circuits with multiple voltage/current sources.  The Inductors/Capacitors sections should also include DC transient analysis.  (Well, this is math heavy, and I don't know if it's really essential for the hobbyist.  Perhaps in the 'expanded' edition.  Simple RC and RL circuits may be enough...probably don't need to consider multiple sequential transients in a single circuit.)  If transients don't get covered, then inductors/capacitors are only useful in the 'AC circuits' chapter.  If this is the case, they should be moved here.


 * Regardless, we could introduce Ls and Cs in one chapter, talk about their transient behaviour elsewhere, resonance in the RLC circuits section, and impedance in the AC chapter. This may make more sense, because no one really wants to know 'everything about capacitors'; they want to know how to use them in a specific context. - maxpower 21:41, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Good ideas. We talked about this in the depth of mathematics section, too. - Omegatron 01:01, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Rereading the depth of mathematics section gave me a chance to look at the electron device modelling book. I suspected that simple models for diodes would be covered there, and they are, but in a very superficial way.  If the coverage there was more comprehensive, we could just link there...but it isn't.  The ideal diode concept and ID model, Constant Voltage Drop model, and Piecewise Linear model should be covered in our diode section.


 * In general, the Electronics sections on diodes and MOSFETs are lacking. The kind of qualitative information given in these sections, while useful in understanding, gives no basis for circuit analysis.  While diode and FET models do, of course, contain MORE MATH, there's really no point in covering these topics without attaching some useful info.  None the less, understanding how these devices work on an electron scale is totally unnecessary.  Models useful for circuit analysis should suffice.  Another useful area to delve into would be CMOS logic.  Virtually no math (except boolean algebra), makes MOSFETs useful.  - maxpower 16:51, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes, we should cover all of those models. There are a few people who are paranoid of math, it seems, and we can certainly explain how things work without it.  But really, that isn't useful for anything.  You can't do anything with your knowledge without knowing the math.  We should try to present the math as accessibly as possible, though.  Presenting transistors as simple switches first and then as "amplifiers" might be a good idea...  As I have mentioned before, I don't like the term amplifier, because a transistor is not an amplifier by itself.  The circuit it is built into is the amplifier.  The transistor is just an electronically controlled valve. - Omegatron


 * Ok. Now here is another question: do people prefer lots of chapters, or few? I personally would rather have full, worthwhile chapters than many small ones. How about this:

- Basic Electricity Concepts (charge, attraction) - Basic DC Electronics (KVL, KCL, Ohm's law) - Resistors - Capacitors - Inductors

rest falls into AC and analog electronics. Perhaps we merge these sections??


 * I agree with concepts, and fundamental laws, but the rest of the merging goes too far. Full worthwhile chapters are great, but this arrangement is not helpful in learning the material.  As I said earlier, no one wants to know everything about capacitors.  They are useful in many contexts, and should be covered in each context, rather than grouping all capacitor information together.


 * Ohm's law needed to go into the fundamental laws section, but circuit components is not a logical part of the fundamental laws section. Also, covering components before laws makes more sense to me. This is a case where I feel that starting small and building up (rather than top-down) really works.


 * BTW, "the rest" does not fall into AC and analog electronics. There are several worthwhile topics that aren't covered in the scheme above: transients, nodal/mesh, Thevenin/Norton. If less chapters does in fact equals better (intentional), nodal/mesh can become one chapter. - maxpower 00:23, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Depth of mathematics
"Dear people editing this book, while math is useful and does have its place in an electronics textbook, it makes it very hard for people to understand electronics."


 * Understood. On the other hand, I had huge amounts of trouble understanding electronics until I got the math background.  When I used to read books on the subject I would skip any equations as being too hard, and hence didn't get a very good understanding of it.  It is almost a form of applied mathematics in several ways.  We should try to make it very intuitive how things work, without needing the math background, but we should also provide the math (in the simplest forms possible), because it really is necessary. - Omegatron 14:30, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't have problems with math, I enjoy it. However, when people write pages upon pages of equations that have little to no explanation, it turns the electronics textbook from a learning book into a formula table. The rule of thumb for most math related textbooks: 1 equation -> 100 words explaining it. - Alex S 14:30, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Certainly. I was intimidated by lots of math, especially when it involved calculus, which I hadn't learned yet (how are we going to handle this?) and skipped over parts in books that had heavy math, my loss.  I mostly learned from a book I still have, by Forrest Mims or something like that.  I will read over it and highlight the parts that led me in the wrong direction. - Omegatron 21:38, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I wrote the part on RCL circuits. This contains a lot of math.  I agree that more explanation is required.  And this is still a work in progress.  Can you explain this topic without the math?  You can do it in the frequency domain with Laplace transforms, but its still not that simple.  You can ignore the zero in the pole/zero diagram and deduce a similar, however wrong equation. It often annoys me when textbooks skip lots of steps in the derivation of their equation or make assumptions without explicitly saying so.  So I have tried to include all the steps, which makes the math appear more complex. Would a compromise be to include both simplified and full explanation?  Peterblockley 00:05, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * And what are laplace transform pairs? - Alex S 14:30, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Laplace transforms are used to calculate a transient response from the frequency response. Peterblockley 00:05, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Yeah that definitely needs to be included. However, I can't remember Laplace transforms at all.  I think I do everything with Fourier transforms now.  Am I thinking about this correctly?  That Fourier can replace Laplace? If so, which should we cover?  I guess the aim of the book should be clarified.  Do we want to teach something that a 10 year old could understand, without really giving them the tools to build or do anything themselves?  Or do we want to teach them as if they were taking a college class?  Should we try to be all things to all people?  (Basic ideas and water pipe analogies at the beginning of a section with calculus and transforms at the end?)  It says in the intro that it should teach the first two years of electronics, but starting with what knowledge? Should we even assume that the reader can understand algebra?


 * On an unrelated note, I think I will start stubifying sections, so that people feel compelled to add more, without being daunted by starting a new section. - Omegatron 01:32, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Laplace transforms are a transform to the S-domain which you may be familiar with from pole-zero diagrams in filter analysis. Fourier transforms are a transform to the frequency domain.  They are similar, but i wouldnt say one replaces the other.  For filter design laplace transforms are best.


 * I have updated the format of the RCL circuit Electronics/RCL_time_domain_simple. what do people think?  Is this simple enough? Peterblockley 03:22, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I have only a basic understanding of calculus (basic derivative calculus) and have little to no idea about those equations. Peter, you might want to kick it down a notch mathematics wise, and add some more explanations to the articles to help people understand. And Omegatron, I think if we made this book start from 0 knowledge and work your way up it would be good. Assuming people have basic algebra knowledge. Maybe we should even have a prerequisite page directing them to other math wikibooks? -Alex S


 * Hmm... I do remember that I used to do Laplace transforms, of course, and I remember pole-zero plots and root-locus diagrams, but I always found them confusing and nonintuitive. bode plots and frequency responses make more sense to me, and were just as easy to use.  Can you give an example of a filter design that is easier in laplace domain?


 * I looked at the simple RCL circuit. I understand now why alex is concerned.  We should start each section with a few sentences that explain the situation in a way that even a child with 4th grade math could understand, and then work our way up from there.  even if "working our way up" means we need to jump right into calculus, that's ok, as long as we have given the reader a basic idea of how charge and charge pressures are flowing. - Omegatron


 * I'm sorry I've to make a comment about the RCL analysis. How is it possible to analyse a RCL circuits without differential equations or in the Laplace or Fourier Domain?  The other choice would be only focussing on steady state but it also comes with the problem of complex maths or at least some maths that might seem a bit strange to someone with any mathematical knowledge.IknowNothing

"In reading A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking he said (and I paraphrase) that his editor told him that for each formula that he included in his book the readership would drop by one half. As a result the only formula he included was the one Einstein is famous for.  I would suggest you keep that in mind as you add math equations.  Decide if the equation you are adding really adds enough value to the work to justify the loss of half the readers being able to comprehend the passage.  Not saying to leave them out, but don't add them for their own sake."


 * I'm sorry, but electronics is a very math-heavy subject. We will try our best to explain the way things work without math, but most of these equations are completely necessary, unless we want to rename the book "electronics for kids" and not really explain any of it. - Omegatron

Circuit template

 * 1) Circuit-Creation Template

moving this here, since it seems to be more for editors than readers. i recommend klunky for drawing schematics anyway, as i have said before. - Omegatron 01:36, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Quantum physics, Quantum Mechanics
I've noticed a lot of references to QM and QP in many articles. For some people it is a more clear system of understanding things. That being said, it also can be irrelevant at times. Sometimes it is a good way to show off how smart you are (I don't mean this in a negative way, however I see this more and more often). What are your thoughts about this?

In order to really understand electronics you need to understand E&M and some parts of Quantum (Spin, electrons, photons, and some random other stuff). Spin is responsible for magnetism, electrons are orbitals, and photons are carrier particles for E&M. This is not to say that we need to teach all the math involved. The main reason things seem irrelevant at times is that they are not well enough explained to show their relevance. Overall electronics is a much bigger field than most people realize, with lots of far ranging implications. Afterall E&M is one of the four fundamental forces in the universe. So what do radio waves have to do with ether?

A Crossroads
Ok. We seem to have run into a crossroads here. We have people pushing for a book more oriented on information about almost everything and how it works, and other people pushing for a book on electronics design with heavy calculus. What are your thoughts? Personally I would want a book that gives useful information about how to design electronics, explaining LAWS and THEOREMS. I mean, learning how the atmosphere works is good -

If I wanted to be a meteorologist.


 * Exactly. - Omegatron

So you really want something that looks like this?


 * Yes. Something that focuses entirely on electronics; not on all related disciplines, with a certain amount of detail.  Electron Device Modelling could list the Electronics book as a prerequisite, for instance, for people who want to know in-depth semiconductor info.  The electronics book won't have that much detail about semiconductors.  A book on electroacoustics or bioacoustics or electrical properties of the atmosphere would be great, but they shouldn't all be lumped into one book about everything. - Omegatron

To the crossroads person, I have no problem with LAWs and THEOREMS and useful information, but I do have problems with needing a graduate level math degree to understand Electronics. Heavy Calculus is just the tip of the math iceberg. As you said yourself "Someone should lay off on the big worded talk". Well make up your mind. Do you or do you not want this book to use graduate level math? As for the atmosphere, if a meteorologist is all you can think of then you have no imagination. Also what is the point of learning Electronics if you do not know how to apply that knowledge? That is the point of this book. Finally, you seem to have something against me given your negative comments. If you persist I will ask the moderators to ban you or erase all of your comments. Play kind and I will play kind. Wanderer

I did not see any comments that were out of line.

"Also what is the point of learning Electronics if you do not know how to apply that knowledge?"

Knowing about infrasound and it's "emotion-intensifying" properties or about the atmosphere is not exactly application. It's learning information from other fields that have no direct application. An application of electronics would be, for instance, designing a circuit to emit 'infrasound'.


 * Exactly, again. :-) - Omegatron

You said the "Book For Geeks" has no purpose and should be deleted. You also said that many of the topics I include have nothing to do with Electronics. You just want a book that will teach you how to design circuits. Well I have grander aspirations, so feel free to ignore anything you feel does not belong. As I am the main person editing this book series, I feel I have the right to shape its destiny. If you do not like the scope of the book series, you are welcome to start your own Electronics book and include any content you desire from this book series. Wanderer


 * Imagine you are working with a group of people who are making a map. It is meant to be a road map, showing roads, cities, and maybe a little bit more useful information to someone driving in a car.  You have to leave for a day, and when you come back, someone else has joined the group, and added county lines, train routes, subway routes, canals, rivers, fast food locations, latitude and longitude, historical locations, topographic lines, magnetic field strength lines, zoning regulations, etc etc.  Not only is it no longer useful as a road map (you can't "just ignore" the parts that are cluttering up the map), it is hard to make sense of it and continue contributing.  I have a feeling this is why you are the major contributor.  I know that it's the reason I don't contribute as much as I used to.  Sorry; I don't want to sound mad or drive you away from helping.  But frankly, a lot of the information you contribute is not helping anyone learn electronics, and some of it is even wrong (resistor value color codes, for instance, and how are capacitors a type of cell?).  I think moderators would agree that your last comment should be turned around.  You are welcome to start your own Electricity, Physics, and How It Relates To Everything book and include any content you desire from this one, but I think this book should focus on practical electronic circuit building, with enough theory to understand it well, and maybe just a few simple radio, computer, etc applications at the end.  maybe more advanced applications; i don't know.  Regardless, let's finish the basics before outlining all these advanced chapters.  Let's work in order so that everything is consistent.


 * The expanded edition may be a good compromise that we all can live with. Maybe we should split them into two distinct books, though.  Maybe there is a way to make drop down menus with additional information so we can hide it from the typical reader unless they want to see it?


 * Whether we want this to be for college level students who know calculus, or high school students who only know algebra, I don't know that either. I would have loved a book that didnt need knowledge of calculus a few years ago...  Maybe we could explain things in terms of frequency spectra instead?  If you go through all the derivations it requires calculus, but I think we could create a simplifed non-calc explanation of fourier transforms, frequency components, sinusoids, phase, etc. and explain everything (inductors, filters) through that.  We should title the book appropriately, so that someone else can write a different type of electronics book if they want.  Electronics: An Introduction for Pre-calculus Students or something.  Maybe we need some voting.  Or maybe this will be like a religion and just split up into 50 different denominations that believe basically the same but don't associate with each other. :-) - Omegatron 16:46, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Notice how lately I have been refering to this project not as a book but as a series of 5 books each the size of the Electronics book. I guess it was a mistake to organize them all on a single page. As for the resistor colors, I got them from some table. As for a capacitor being a variant of a cell, well both have to do with the separation of charge and you can power lasers by discharging capacitors. Wanderer


 * Yeah, I guess they are kind of similar. I think I read somewhere that those "supercaps" in the kilofarad range behave in-between real capacitors and batteries. - Omegatron

5 books is quite a bit. Anyways, I don't know. You seem to claim that you started this book. However, that should not mean that you 'own' the book. When this book was 'started' by you, it was one page with a bunch of random formulas (go check). It's not like we're even fighting for credit here. This is all open source, free text. None of us will gain anything or benefit. We shouldn't be fighting at all. But the main problem is the relevancy of information. I personally want a book on electronics design. Please don't be angry at my comments, but I felt that this needed to be said. You've mentioned many many times that you've started this book. Are you saying that because you've started the book, that you have more input or command over it than others? Lastly, Omegatron's map analogy pretty much well sums up everything. What are your views on moving parts of this textbook into other textbooks? 你有不脑.


 * Splitting it into 5 books might be a good idea. I still think we should start at the beginning and not start putting content into the next sections until the first sections have at least the 75% symbol.


 * Likewise, being the major contributor does not mean you "own" the book, either. It's a collaborative effort, which should theoretically tend to make the information more useful and relevant and error-free than real books written by one person. - Omegatron

I'm not disputing the need for a book on Electronics design based on Omegatron's road map. That's why I split up the old book up into five books. The only thing linking them together is that they share the same namespace. Is there a reason I can't put a series of books in the same namespace? After all the only difference between Wikibooks is that they have different namespaces. The expanded edition is just a temporary holding place for these books.

As for ownership, all books start as nothing. The reason I say I have more input than anyone else, is I have spent quite a bit more time than anyone else organizing and working on the book. I could care less about credit and have no problems with collaboration, but I do want the power to shape the overall content of the book series. Given that topics like the atmosphere will not appear in the first book, I do not see the problem. Wanderer


 * Wanderer I don't see how you can have the power to shape the overall content of the books. Everything here is done by collaboration. I'm concerned about overlap. If a topic is not strictly electronics, then it probably better to go into a general physics textbook. Otherwise all our books will overlap considerably and we will be constantly reinventing the wheel, which is in nobody's interest. I can personally see two books a "non calculus book" and a calculus one. (Also can we please keep the discussion calm? Talking of banning etc. is not very nice, Oh yeah one more thing, would the anon editor please sign comments I'm finding it hart to follow the conversation) Theresa knott 09:24, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Given that this is an issue that refuses to die, I have created another book called Physics in English. Since chapter 1 and various other topics are background reading, I have moved them to the new book. This way the Electronics book can focus on circuit design from the start to the end. Wanderer


 * I think we should leave charge and voltage and current, as they are inherently electronics topics. We won't go into too much detail about electromagnetism and maxwell's equations, but explain enough for the reader to understand relays, inductors, transformers, parasitic components, crosstalk, (anything else?)  It's kind of like... a capacitor stores charge and can supply a voltage, a diode blocks current in one direction, a transformer converts voltages and currents, so those are electronics topics, but just because a piezo buzzer produces sound, and a cell produces chemical reactions, doesn't mean all of acoustics and chemistry should be subtopics.  Likewise, we aren't explaining all of the implications of charged particles and currents and voltages either.  Just enough for them to understand what they are manipulating.  I think of the reader as knowing basically what atoms and electrons are, but not much more about what goes on in a piece of metal or circuit.


 * I need to stop coming to this page and just work on the articles. :-) - Omegatron 23:19, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Unusual visualizations
I just saw this. I haven't read it all, but it looks interesting. Maybe we want to include it? This is kind of a note to myself to read it later, and showing it to others so you can judge how useful it is:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/es/May2001/16/Begin.htm

- Omegatron 14:16, 7 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Looks like a graphical representation of voltage and current. Might be good for explaining voltage drops and current, but it is more ambiguous and inflexible than a circuit diagram. Having a good physical understanding of voltage would probably be more useful. Wanderer

Here is another type of visualization, with voltage represented as 3d height. This might help some people:

http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/other/3Dcircuits/

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/es/Aug1996/005/cd/

- Omegatron 15:44, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

people whining about how bad their physics/electronics textbook is

 * PHYSICS SERMON #49 W. Beaty 1999 http://www.amasci.com/amateur/physerm1.html
 * Why Oh Why Can't Chad Orzel Teach From a Better Physics Textbook? http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000850.html
 * Electricity & Magnetism lesson plans http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/science/physics/electricity/
 * AM I JUST A PEDANTIC SCIENCE-NITPICKER? William Beaty 1998 http://amasci.com/miscon/nitpik.html

Please add more links -- once we *know* something is confusing/misleading, then we can try to make sure this textbook is better.

Yes, I really like William Beaty. I think I'm going to invite him to edit this wikibook. -- DavidCary 05:15, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As a counter example, the probably best book on circuits ever: "Linear and nonlinear circuits" by Leon O. Chua et al, (c) 1987 McGraw-Hill Inc, ISBN 0-07-010898-6. This has been out of print for a decade or so now, maybe McGraw-Hill could be convinced to relicense it under FDL or place it in the public domain. -- Arthur Korn  11:47, 18. Sep 2004 (CEST)

Monkey article
I'm taking out a link to a CBS News page (about some monkey walking upright after recuperation from illness) inserted by Omegatron on July 22, 2004. Totally irrelevant to Electronics and must have been inserted by mistake. H Padleckas 17:13, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

hahaha! sorry about that. i need to be more careful it seems... - Omegatron 19:26, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)