In the 1960s, Kosmos made the best electronics sets available. If you went through the kits, you received a complete undergraduate course in electronics (less the calculus).
There ought to be something similar for calculus too. While a detailed and formal treatment of the subject can be delayed till the age at which it's introduced now, I feel that the intuition and feel for calculus can be formed more efficiently at an earlier age.
If nothing else, it may help them understand where to seek solutions for the common problems they encounter. I started learning Electronics at a fairly young age using undergraduate level textbooks that I found lying around. The need for and relationships between concepts in calculus, logarithms and trigonometry were a recurrent problem for me.
PS: If anybody is wondering, those books were from an earlier generation engineer. They were very interesting, to say the least. All the circuits (amplifiers, rectifiers, oscillators, multivibrators, mixers, various RF Txr and Rxr designs, etc) were using vacuum tubes! Diodes, triodes, pentodes, thyratrons, magnetrons, TWTs, etc were used liberally in them. It had a description of an early form of the Instrumental Landing System (ILS). There were also descriptions of some early generation semiconductor devices and their similarity to vacuum tubes. I don't think ICs were in much use back then, because the book had no mentions about them.
I used to spend hours at a time with those books when I was a child. Later I graduated in Electronics engineering and went on to work on the avionics for a satellite launcher. Vacuum tubes were museum pieces by the time I was born. But I was the only one in my undergraduate class who had seen or knew anything about vacuum tubes, when we had lessons on CRTs, magnetrons, etc. I can't stress how deeply those books influenced my education and career. Sweet memories!
> The need for and relationships between concepts in calculus, logarithms and trigonometry were a recurrent problem for me.
Oh my gosh, this was me growing up! I loved tinkering with electronics and programming, but I kept bumping against my lack of knowledge wrt more advanced math topics. I usually hacked around it, or more often just switched to a different project.
Now that I'm taking calculus, I feel like I always have a corresponding application for each topic we cover. It's very exciting!
Not a kid but what are the next steps after this book? I've been trying to find the steps of the ladder between "playing with muxes and clocks" and "designing a USB3 peripheral", but that has been a challenge in itself.
Make 5-10 of multivibrators each on different schemeatics. Bonus point - make them as fast as you can - starting from the prototyping stage and finishing with the device ready to be either gifted or used as a lab generator.
But playing with clocks and multiplexer is definitely not a beginning of the ladder.
Yeah, it seems clocks and muxes is what comes after this book? A possibly not so great suggestion is building a radio(receiver)? It is pretty challenging with oscillators, tuned circuits, mixers, amplifiers (basically a mix of RF, AC and DC).
I figure it's fair enough, since this is a great but not free book, to drop https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/ - a truly amazing, and in my opinion extraordinarily well written and organized free learning resource.
It's a labor of love and a great reference to go back to, but I wouldn't recommend it for newcomers.
Traditional books benefit from having an editor who (ideally) asks questions like "who are you writing for", "what's the best order to introduce ideas", and "how much detail is enough". If you don't ask these questions, you often end up getting too deep into the weeds or jumping back and forth between ideas in ways that can be difficult to follow. To give you a specific example, the guide spends a lot of time on some of the more obscure theories in DC network analysis before even defining what a battery is, capacitors and inductors are explained in the DC section by focusing on their AC characteristics, there is a ton of unnecessary quantum physics trivia ahead of explaining what a diode is, discussion of op-amps kicks off with an odd reference to calculus, etc.
Again, I don't mean that as a criticism, it's just that (properly edited) books have their merits.
I think you make excellent points and can't see anything I don't agree with. For me, there's no substitute for a proper book, especially being a bit of an eccentric learner.
But certainly AAC could be a brilliant supplementary resource.
The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill, is aimed at a university or professional audience, but could also be an incredible learning resource for a younger student (or older hobbyist!) interested in learning more about the field.
Speaking for myself, I would have loved to read something like this when I was first experimenting with electronics as a child. A lot of the details would have gone over my head, but even just knowing the general outlines of the topics it covered would have been a huge step up.
Amazon.de for example already has it(for preorder). Oreilly books online has the first edition available right now. I reckon they might add the second revision when it comes out.
I had a hard time finding it as well. I think maybe because the text is underlined and the font is small? It is harder to read "into" that text. Maybe it should be on its own line? Or it should be up next to "Full Color" / the cover? Maybe some "copy" pro would know the reason right away but it seems rather hard to find to me.
It's only a recommendation, not a strict instruction. It's the age group that the author is targeting and is assumed to have the requisite background knowledge and reasoning skills required to follow the material. It's understood to vary between individuals.
This is similar to 'intended audience' section of technical books for adults. Do you find those insulting?
He requested that age requirement, it makes him looking like an etatist. His family will never raise Terence Tao even if their boy will be exactly same qualities.
Some kids use to solder earlier than at 10y.o. so the intended audience is wrong. If the kid has not learned what is a transistor by the age of 5 yet, they are not an intended audience.
https://generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html
If nothing else, it may help them understand where to seek solutions for the common problems they encounter. I started learning Electronics at a fairly young age using undergraduate level textbooks that I found lying around. The need for and relationships between concepts in calculus, logarithms and trigonometry were a recurrent problem for me.
PS: If anybody is wondering, those books were from an earlier generation engineer. They were very interesting, to say the least. All the circuits (amplifiers, rectifiers, oscillators, multivibrators, mixers, various RF Txr and Rxr designs, etc) were using vacuum tubes! Diodes, triodes, pentodes, thyratrons, magnetrons, TWTs, etc were used liberally in them. It had a description of an early form of the Instrumental Landing System (ILS). There were also descriptions of some early generation semiconductor devices and their similarity to vacuum tubes. I don't think ICs were in much use back then, because the book had no mentions about them.
I used to spend hours at a time with those books when I was a child. Later I graduated in Electronics engineering and went on to work on the avionics for a satellite launcher. Vacuum tubes were museum pieces by the time I was born. But I was the only one in my undergraduate class who had seen or knew anything about vacuum tubes, when we had lessons on CRTs, magnetrons, etc. I can't stress how deeply those books influenced my education and career. Sweet memories!
Oh my gosh, this was me growing up! I loved tinkering with electronics and programming, but I kept bumping against my lack of knowledge wrt more advanced math topics. I usually hacked around it, or more often just switched to a different project.
Now that I'm taking calculus, I feel like I always have a corresponding application for each topic we cover. It's very exciting!
mathacademy.com very thourough and highly effective.
https://www.worldofbooks.com/products/calculus-the-easy-way-...
Elenco continues to sell one of the kits that I used to have, less RadioShack branding.
But playing with clocks and multiplexer is definitely not a beginning of the ladder.
Specifically https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/
Traditional books benefit from having an editor who (ideally) asks questions like "who are you writing for", "what's the best order to introduce ideas", and "how much detail is enough". If you don't ask these questions, you often end up getting too deep into the weeds or jumping back and forth between ideas in ways that can be difficult to follow. To give you a specific example, the guide spends a lot of time on some of the more obscure theories in DC network analysis before even defining what a battery is, capacitors and inductors are explained in the DC section by focusing on their AC characteristics, there is a ton of unnecessary quantum physics trivia ahead of explaining what a diode is, discussion of op-amps kicks off with an odd reference to calculus, etc.
Again, I don't mean that as a criticism, it's just that (properly edited) books have their merits.
But certainly AAC could be a brilliant supplementary resource.
Speaking for myself, I would have loved to read something like this when I was first experimenting with electronics as a child. A lot of the details would have gone over my head, but even just knowing the general outlines of the topics it covered would have been a huge step up.
[1] https://www.jameco.com/z/KIT-EFK-BUNDLE-Jameco-Kitpro-Compon...
It had a wonderful kit where you would use screws in a board so you could see every wire path. Much easier to explain than modern breadboards
If you ignore the reviews near the end, the page doesn't have a lot of text. And not everything needs to be accessible by quickly scanning.
This is similar to 'intended audience' section of technical books for adults. Do you find those insulting?
Some kids use to solder earlier than at 10y.o. so the intended audience is wrong. If the kid has not learned what is a transistor by the age of 5 yet, they are not an intended audience.