Make Electronics: Learning by Discovery

* IntroductionThis book is well bound with quality paper and the binding is excellent. The text is well sized for the pages.* Target audience?Its target audience i.m.h.o is anything from A level and upwards. To my mind this book has been written to help the following groups; the student who is coming to this for the first time and so is very well equipped with this book, or any student that's found these skills base is a bit rusty.* What's it best features?This book is another gem. There are places in your bookcases for down - to - earth, practical explanations of basic skills as explained within this rather wonderful book. Such as how to build discrete circuits on circuit boards with the ultimate in clarity using colour pictures and easier to comprehend explanations of, say, the well - known 555 timer using these skills and other designs, such as including transistors in circuits. The technical level has almost all the mathematical removed from the book, this to encourage the learner to concentrate on the clarity it going through to show. There are other books to help with the mathematical stuff. I read this book in two sittings and loved reading it.* SummaryThis book explains the fundamental electrical skills you need to know, but in the highly competitive studies you may feel embarrassed to admit you do not know already. I wish i had this book when i did my studies as it would have accelerated my progression in technical reports and practical circuit building and designing.

This is the best introduction to practical electronics I have found. It is clearly written and well illustrated and the suggested experiments are interesting and help you learn. The problem is that it is written with US suggestions for parts. There is a parts kit available from a US shipper for chapters 1-4 but it is expensive and the shipping costs significant especially if you get hit with customs/VAT. Instead I ordered nearly all the parts from Maplin: their GCSE component kit is an excellent start and then you only need to add a few switches and potentiometers. If you read ahead a few chapters you can find what you need and Maplin have a small minimum order quantity. I thought the last chapter got a little esoteric and the computing part has dated quickly. However all in all, I strongly recommend this.In case it helps others, I recommend as a next step: Hands on Electronics: A practical introduction to Analog and Digital Circuits by Kaplan and White. It deals very well with the bits this book skims over, particularly transitors and op amps. You will need a scope and will have to cobble together the right power supplies or buy an bench unit but there are good value versions available on Amazon (Rigol scope and Basetech BT-305 power supply are good).A good text book will also help. I resisted buying the bible, The Art of Electronics by HandH, for ages because it is ridiculously expensive and out of date, but finally succumbed and did not regret it. The explanations and exercises are outstanding and only the component lists and computing parts date really badly.

My 11 year old son received this as a birthday present as he had become interested in digital electronics - one of his school books had demonstrated a 'full adder' in comic-strip fashion and he decided he wanted to have a go and build one for himself.The book is well illustrated and has some excellent photographs of the components you'll be using. The writing style is easy to follow and in-depth background information is included in optional sections. I like the way that the circuits being built evolve from things held together with crocodile clips which are easy to put together quickly through the use of breadboards and on to soldered projects building skills and knowledge on the way. One minor criticism is that although the author lists the parts needed for projects at the start of each section it isn't always that clear how vital they are to the main thrust of the book, some are only there to be destroyed and some for one side project.As to the audience of the book, my son has loved it. We are about a third of the way through and he was thrilled with his first breadboard project, a siren with two stage amplification built from transistors. He is looking forward to the later parts where he starts to play with logic gates and can make his full-adder, but also to making a little amplifier for his MP3 player.As an American book it can be tricky to find the exact match for some of the parts and it is worth shopping around for internet based sellers for the components. I'd estimate that we've spent about £50 on parts so far (thank goodness he got some Birthday money!) and that should cover the first half to two thirds of the book. Costs can be cut by not buying project boxes and using bits and pieces from around the house.Overall I'd recommend this book, I've learned a lot from it and my son has thoroughly enjoyed it, more so than the Cambridge Brainbox style of clip together electronic kits that he had tried before.