The Holy Grail of Electronics | Practical Electronics for Inventors

okay so today I present to you the Holy Grail of electronics books all right this is going to be a followup from my last uh video you know since I shared the uh grubs basic Electronics over here okay that's a part of the detona state engineering program I figured I just jump right into a book that I've been wanting to review for a while and just kind of give it all to you guys straight up if we're talking about remember I I made some comments in the last uh video about this book being a little

bit um basic and but it is basic Electronics right so it's it's really is a really good book for starters one thing I didn't mention in the previous video is that this is all algebra based um which is a problem good way to start with electronics but here I'm going to show you the Holy Grail the most Evergreen book I think I own and might ever have in electronics okay and if you're not familiar with the term Evergreen means an evergreen book is one that'll basically last forever it'll W be outdated it's the information in

it it's like a encyclopedic okay this is like an encyclopedia for uh electronics all right I know art art Electronics is is is known in in the kind of electronics um pedagogy world or educational world as being the encyclopedia for electronics and the Evergreen book for electronics but I don't know I've reviewed the book I have a copy of it uh a digital copy I don't own a physical copy I didn't learn Electronics by Art Electronics uh so maybe I'll have to do another video maybe I'll get a physical copy of it um just to

have on hand because it's kind of like you know it's it's a major part of the Lexicon so if you're a collector of these kind of books you'd want to have that so I can't speak that much on it because I don't have my personal experience with it but I have skimmed through it before on the digital copy and I think it pales in comparison to what we have here though this is a more updated book so it has um more current Electronics in it and it's not only that but just the layout in it

I think I think the difference you know when I said that this book The grubs book is b a little bit more basic which it's again it's introduction Electronics it's basic Electronics what I mean by that it doesn't have a lot of more complex details and this book I think what it does really well this is the Practical electronics for inventors okay by Paul Schwarz and Simon now what this book does very well is it gives you kind of it gives you the complexity but it doesn't get overly complex right it's like again because it's

it's intended for it's practical and it's for inventors it's for people to make things you know so again you know part of me feels like oh man I maybe I should not share this you know because like this is like this is the book man this is the book okay like if I had any kind of tricks up my sleeve if I felt like you know I had an edge on anybody um as far as developing ideas or or um uh coming up with designs it would be predicated on on owning this book primarily you

know but you know I'm I'm also a follower of the open source kind of movement in a certain way and I have I have a sensibility that appeals to that and I'll say hey man you know might as well share it you know someone else can obviously it's not like I'm keeping any secrets from the world here um it's book it's been out for a while this is the fourth edition I believe this is the um most uh updated Edition but you know it's it's out it's available um you know again I'm not keeping any

secrets here but what I what I'm saying again is just that uh you know if there's anything that's going to make you feel like you have a really good Edge that you're going to really um maximize your potential as an Electronics inventor or um as a developer this book will likely be the Gateway again because it has all the stuff that you might want to search on the internet and want to get a little deeper into it's going to be in here and it's going to be it there's a certain amount of complexity but also

brevity that's really good in this book okay and that's what I like what I like about it now we'll start and we'll go through it before I keep bling been over here so first page symbol layout it's got batteries AC sources some connections um switches grounds potentiometers capacitors inductors dodes some moreon switches trans resistors it goes through all types of symbology for transistors and I think this is partly why this book has an edge is because it it goes into very good detail with um mosfets and fets and all that and maybe even some igbt

uh um uh transistors so yep igbt is in here so insulated gate polar transistor bipolar transistor so that's part of the reason why but look it even has it even has tubes it even has tubes I don't know if there's that much literature in here about vacuum tubes but it has the um symbology here for vacuum tubes which is awesome you know that's my world paying some Credence to the uh paying some Credence to the uh the pioneers of of the electrical world so um photo transistors all right off AMS you got some gates in

here just a great book okay now second page we're going into trans or or resistors so it's going to show the color coding of transistors or resistors again going to show you the tolerance table capacitor markings see and all this is referential see it's much more again it's much more for practical use right because this is referential you could open this up and you could just try to figure out whatever you want to see whatever you need to see is right here okay and that's part of what's nice about this it's all laid out um

for practical use let's keep going here and I didn't walk through this before this video and pick things out I've got some uh some tabbed out you know Pages here that were of my interest and I left that in there and I'll probably just skim through um and maybe go through some of those tabs this is a larger book then you can see the the kind of uh the thickness of it this it's a larger book than the basic Electronics um but it's it's again it's it's like a refer book it's not it's not a

uh it's not it's not like a book that you'd read all the way through like you're trying to learn something even it's more of a reference a reference book now who are these guys let's see about about the authors okay so Paul Schwarz is a systems operation manager and who received his BS in physics Bachelor of Science and physics from the University of wi Wisconsin all right now Dr Simon Monk bachelor's degree in cybernetics and computer science PhD software engineer okay so these are the guys that you're talking about oh we had some books on

uh the Arduino and hacking and the Raspberry Pi okay so here are some things I had highlighted intro Electronics Theory voltage he goes through all this um you see the last book I I had a I had a little complaint about it that it kind of it went into it went into insulators a little bit later and this does it right in Chapter 2 so it has a a much better framework I believe for even if you're the first chapter first two three chapters are are are really good introductions to to electronics so the intro

going into the theory then going into insulators and then wire gauges really good setup there then it goes on to AC goes on to capacitors inductors it talks about filters then basic electronic components battery switches relays Transformers inductors now we have Transformers in here which we didn't have any other book now semiconductors water semiconductors it goes into diodes transistors thyers integrated circuits octo Electronics so that's going to be all your photo diodes and all that sensors you know again he's going through basically all the kind of components you could ever because again it's for inventors

so anything that you want to invent so is going to go through all these sensors so what temperature sensor proximity and touch movement and force chemical light radiation magnetism sound sensors okay um constructing circuits multimeters uh oscilloscopes operational amplifiers and like I said really good detail on the operational amplifiers filters he's going to go into really good detail on filters um Digital Electronics look I mean chapter 12 Digital Electronics is is over 100 Pages it's like 120 Pages almost of of just Digital Electronics so again very deep stuff here Motors audio Electronics power distribution in

home error analysis that's where I believe it gets into some calculus so there is some calculus here and useful facts and formulas okay so in the useful facts and formulas he goes through Greek alphabet Powers a linear functions quadratic functions uh exponents logarithms trigonometry complex numbers differential calculus and integral calculus so basically all kind of the basics C the basic uh kind of mathematics that are involved in electronics so very good very good so here we have the introduction and maybe if I can just scan a couple Pages here he talks about the electron he's

got the equation for the electron for the uh I think it's I think he's calculating the current how many like how much how many electrons are in one amp of uh electrical current then he talks about conventional currents and there's not this isn't really a math heavy book it's really it's really there for explanation I believe you know it's really and that's what it's really good for it's really good at explaining and it has good illustrations and it's just kind of everything you want in a reference book so here we go into I think uh

okay conductance and he's talking about like the the electron path and conductors here's a really cool table I like a lot like this is the kind of cool stuff that this thing has in here I mean so you have a table here of of conductors okay and you're showing you here temperature velocity electron density work function so we have all the properties of these various Metals here that we might use as conductors very cool resist dist and conductivity I mean if you want to have really good working knowledge and some Physics some like good science

and physics involved then this is this is this is it I mean you could start off Electronics on this and I would recommend it I mean look at this he's got another table he's got another table conductance of various materials so this one has tungsten on it and platinum brass the silicone gallium sulfur Teflon is insulators so he has some insulators he has some some semiconductor materials in here and you can see from the conductivity you can compare them so the conductivity of aluminum as compared to the conductivity of Teflon Teflon is 1014 conductivity of

aluminum is 3.55 * 10 7th temperature coefficients resistivity I mean all just awesome stuff let's go to one of these pages I had here marked here what was I looking at thermal resistance he's got a table for thermal resistance of of items Common Ground so now he's looking at Ground showing you about ground Loops that's another thing we didn't really talk about in the basic Electronics video so let's spend a little bit of time looking at this because again like I said uh we didn't really go through this too much the other the other book

I don't believe had any any uh reference to ground so grounding is a really big thing um especially if you're going to make your own circuits um especially like what I used to do with is audio Electronics and grounding improper grounding can cause a lot of noise and you don't want that so that's one of the biggest battles you could have a great circuit a great idea but if you don't ground it properly or I could say properly but every almost every situation is different and that's kind of where Electronics gets interesting because you see

a lot of the physics with grounding because sometimes having a ground too close to a certain thing could could cause noise right so things that you wouldn't expect expect like ground can be a very elusive topic you know it's not just a safety thing um there's certain phenomenon um that can be caused by grounding things in a certain way um grounding certain things in a certain way can even cause oscillation you know so you might have a an amplifier that's oscillating and you don't know why and it it might be a grounding issue a ground

being too close to something again that might cause that so we've got a bunch of different diagrams on improper grounding and proper grounding how things should be done which is really useful again different ground symbols very important very important stuff if you're new to electronics I would not gloss over this I would study this very very much some stuff on resistors the voltage divider design very practical use there let's keep going let's keep going I'm just going to keep flipping some more pages here just getting into um capacitors you see there is some see some

integral calculus here with respect to capacitors the energy in a capacitor so he has these more as examples he's not really expecting us to do the uh integral calculus here or anything like that he's just showing formulas essentially um and I think even gives you simpler versions of of the same of the same equation discharging a capacitor there again very useful sometimes you could have a circuit that has high voltage in a capacitor and you want to discharge it so because you don't want it to have high voltage in it all the time because someone

might work on it you might work on it and you don't want to open it up and have to discharge the capacitor all the time again very practical stuff here now we're getting into magnetism again I can't go every page because it's just so there's so much fair day's law there's so much material in here that it'll take all day but a good combination of physics and electronics and practical use I mean you'll be a pretty good Master if you look at this stuff I mean and it's it's not dumbed down I guess it's what

I like about it too it's not dumb down but it's very useful okay now we're getting into fite the permeability of fite fite is used to suspend uh radio frequencies iron core so we're getting into some IND conductors okay studying a little about the about the Henry I'm going to flip a couple Pages here this is still this is still considered basic pretty much right this is just talking about networks and circuits you know basic networks this is we're on page 200 we're still on basic Networks we're getting a little bit into frequencies a look

at this full wave rectification spice he even goes into spice now so we're talking about um simulator so spice is like CAD for uh electronics designers so they's showing you example there the spice and maybe someday I'll do some more spice tutorials something I haven't spent that much time on but uh haven't spent that many videos on I spent a lot of time on spice just not making videos and it might be worth it those you got a little Matrix here basic components now we're getting into batteries and why Myers This is what I mean

just great reference I mean how could you ever get tired of this anything you want to know is probably in here different types of capacitors so polyester film polypropylene silver micia ceramic compasses titanium oil fill compass now I get into full W rectification talking about Ripple how to get Ripple out of your DC now we're talking about high and low pass filters current limiters shortwave receiver so couple of block schematic shortwave receiver an amplifier oscillator transmitter very cool stuff and he kind of breaks down again the basics and gives you good building blocks for how

these things work Transformer cores variac man it just goes on and on in this thing diodes now we're talking look we got a full list of diodes most popular diodes here right this is another thing you want to get familiar with you know you're getting into Electronics you got to kind of know the uh what's commonly used right kind of the um most common items some of this is of course probably Chang now because we're surface mount devices I know a lot of parts that I used to use when I grew up they're now Al

obsolete but always good to know voltage quadrupler voltage tripler AC or am detector oh now we're getting into some transistors looks like a very good layout gets you all the equations at different points of the uh transistor here transistor has a switch oh transistor has an amplifier now this I talked about it length pretty good the other day and the basic Electronics as you can see how much much more detail he goes into here um he's talking about the common emitter and he gives you all the he's got block frequency or block uh formulas pointing

at the area which that formula relates to very helpful he got explanations all around it and he shows the common he shows uh the common this is a common collector amplifier common collector amplifiers so I suppose so it looks like oh he does common collector first that's unusual first he goes into current biasing and then goes into the emitter follower oh just very good stuff I mean this is where you really dial things down now we're at the common emitter follower so then he so he does he does the emitter amplifier and then the common

emitter very good stuff oh now we're getting to DAR Darlington pairs see that's nothing so we didn't talk about that voltage Regulators didn't talk about that in the other book very useful stuff relay drivers let see if I can see them out a little bit there that's a relay driver right there a complimentary uh amplifiers complimentary symmetry so that's this is where uh usually like in a pull push amplifier you saw that kind of configuration in the block diagram of the uh integrated circuit that I showed you in the previous book logic gates he's showing

you here how to make up there's some multivibrators or flipflops sometimes you call them so there's a multivibrator circuits he's showing you how to make Gates out of transistors instead of just the digital way then he goes into the same kind of things but with Jeff with the Jett uh uh transistors very useful stuff audio [Music] mixure now we're getting into most fats look at all the information on most fats I mean guys like I you you kind of have an idea now why I was talking about this book I mean you'll be able to

create anything you want answer all the questions you need answered and uh come up with some really great stuff with this book and I've had this for years years and I still haven't scratched the surface really you know it's just again it's a reference book it's really a reference book let's keep going op so here we're going into LEDs we're going into uh like Photo dial Stu lasers it looks like a little bit light activated relay you ever wondered how that that is done there you go sorry if I'm going a little bit fast it's

just there's a lot in here and I want to get there and like I said this book is just too large also AC isolation Transformer very cool to understand that there's just too much in here look even goes into DIY workbench I to make a workbench for your I mean this is a real deal serious you know operational amplifiers we talked a little bit about them the other day a peak detector that's always is a staple and operation liquefiers okay timing some power inversion okay some this is pretty cool okay a dual look at this

a uh see if I can get that in a shot there okay so a dual uh dual pool dual polarity uh power supply 12vt um like I said I don't know that any of these Regulators are used anymore this is like this is much how like when I grew up this is the kind of topology I was used to kind of topology I would still do your use today this is really going to be done with um pulsewidth modulation so this is kind of outdated like again I don't know that any of these um any

of these uh regulators actually still on the market um hopefully they are though it's kind of nostalgic at this point okay what are we getting into now so we're getting into digital he's got some coding seven bit code he's got a coding table with all the ones and zeros a hexadecimal some common chips some common uh and and no and Nan gate chips some more on logic gates looks like some truth tables some seamos stuff some more with Gates flash memory RAM micro controllers very popular today Arduino a little bit on some code a simple

deck digital analog converter programming Pro programming step Motors oh audio Electronics preamplifiers it's what I loved I used to love designing preamplifiers we got a couple preamplifier blocks here for microphones crossover networks modular electronics and the useful tables all right so we go through the alphabet the Greek alphabet goes through some trigonometry goes through some EXT exponential functions to go through some integral calculus some derivatives all good stuff man so again if you want the basically the best reference book out there for electronics now if I find something else then I'll eat those words but

as far as I know this is the real deal this is the best so your reference book for electronics practical electronics for inventors let me know if you have any more questions um there was a number were a number of you that reached out in the uh last video I appreciate the engagement and if you have any more questions or want to know anything else um let me know and we can further the discussion we can keep keep it going if you're studying Electronics or if you're wanting to study electronics and you want some more

information about anything or you want to discuss some topics or a book or if there's a uh area um that I could go into more detail and you know coming up with designs or schematic writing anything of that sort let me know but in the meantime see if you can get yourself a copy and enjoy it