5 comments about Electromagnetics (McGraw-Hill Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering).

1. The best introduction to engineering physics I've ever read



2. I found this to be informative from the beginning. The author does a very thorough job in explaining the nuances of electromagnetics.



3. I consider this book to be one of the best books about E&M I've ever seen... it's quite technical but not cumbersome at all! Actually, I think it makes quite a pleasant reading! I've read other books on E&M and electrodynamics and I consider this book to be a very good intro to engineering electromagnetics. However, if you want a more theoretical insight, I recommend that you choose a good book on electrodynamics. This book is definitely worth buying!!



4. If you are looking for an in-depth textbook on ELECTROMAGNETICS, then choose the 4th edition of this text. That book made me say, "Show me a better textbook if you can."

   Not this one. This book, after giving you a brief introduction to electric and magnetic fields, goes to the applications of electromagnetics - transmission lines, waveguides etc. If these things interest you, choose this edition.

   Otherwise, I recommend the 4th edition because it is simply the BIBLE of Electromagnetics.




5. I was very happy with this transaction, everything went smoothly. I was especially impressed with the quality of the book concidering it was a used item.

2 comments about Electrical Safety Handbook.

1. This is an exceptionally useful and user-friendly handbook. I am particularly impressed by the authors' credentials -- one of them is a Certified Plant Engineer, one is a Registered Professional Engineer, and one of them is a Medical Doctor (board-certified as a physician in general preventive medicine and public health). The illustrations supplement the text very well, too.



2. This is a very useful and user-friendly book. I am especially impressed by the qualifications of the authors. One is a Certified Plant Engineer and longtime member of the Association for Facilities Engineering, one is a Registered Professional Enginer, and one is a Medical Doctor (board-certified as a physician in general preventive medicine and public health.) The book covers a wide range of topics; the illustrations are very compelling, too. All 12 chapters were dense with facts yet easy to follow.

5 comments about Principles of Electronic Instrumentation.

1. The way in which some of the sections are presented is much more complicated than they have to be in this book. It also has a tendency to give you problems that it hasn't taught in the section, expecting you to understand the concept from the limited information in the question. The only thing I really like about this book is that all the answers are in the back, not just the even or the odd.



2. I haven't tackled many of the problems, so I can't speak to the overabundance of typos that everybody else is complaining about, nor the quality of selection of the problems. I can say that this book presents a very organized review of a wide range of well-chosen topics. If you already have a decent understanding, it's an excellent reference. However, I find that whenever I come across a topic in which I need instruction right from the beginning, this book is almost always way too terse to be of any use.



3. The book seems poorly edited, the presentation of the basic material is too short (a large portion of this book is data sheets), much of the mateial in the exercises at the ends of the chapters is not discussed in the text, and there ar no solutions provided. On the other hand, the book does some good in its short and to-the-point explanations of some basic to intemediate ideas in modern electronics, and it is up-to-date. I would not reccomend this book for self study, but it should work fairly well for an introductory course at the undergraduate level- as long as the instructor covers the material left out of the book.



4. I'm not sure why there are so many poor reviews of this book. I used the 2nd edition years ago and liked it - this 3rd edition continues to be very good.
   
   It's approach is simple, clear & direct. The math is mostly algebra & trigonometry based with a bit of calculus thrown in here and there. This makes it very approachable especially if you don't have much experience with electronics. It's much clearer than Brophy ever was and more detailed than Faissler's book (Introduction to Modern Electronics).
   
   I find many university level intro electronics books don't give enough motivation i.e. how you actually use the stuff. Electronics is, after all, an intensely PRACTICAL subject. This book throughout shows you where and how it relates to scientific applications. Chapter 7 on transducers and chapter 15 on noise are good intros to these areas in this regard.
   
   dislikes: 30% (170/577 pages) of book is devoted to datasheets. Why I don't know. In every intro electronics course I've seen datasheets are rarely used. And just how likely is it that you'll need the ones in this book? - usually you'll need sheets for some oddball component in the lab portion of a course. These pages are a waste and should have been devoted to something else.
   
   It should also have had end-of-chapter references for more advanced books. Glossary would have been nice too.
   
   ----------------------
   
   if you want a more rigorous intro book use "Principles of Electronics: Analog and Digital" by Lloyd R. Fortney.
   
   If you want more info on transducers, practical building and noise reduction techniques look at 1) "Electronics and Instrumentation for Scientists" by Malmstadt/Enke/Crouch, 2) "Measurement and Instrumentation Principles" 3rd Edition by Alan S. Morris, 3) "Signal Recovery from Noise in Electronic Instrumentation" by T.H. Wilmshurst, 4) "Electronic Instrument Handbook" by Clyde F. Coombs and 5) "Building Scientific Apparatus" by Moore/Davis/Coplan



5. Used this as the textbook for our basic college electronics course. It is riddled with major mistakes that made it impossible to trust any information. It is impossible to do many of the exercises without extensive knowledge not found in the book. The explanations are often difficult to follow. Definitely not for the novice. I would stay away from this book!

No comments about Photovoltaic Materials (Series on Properties of Semiconductor Materials , Vol 1).

No comments about Spin Physics in Semiconductors (Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences).

1 comments about ASIC Design in the Silicon Sandbox: A Complete Guide to Building Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits.

1. Highly recommended for readers from analog/mix-signal design engineers, system planners, project managers, to Semicon industry analyst...
   
   This relatively thin book (<400 pages) is full of contents, obviously resulting from many years of analog design experience (and the author give them out without any reservations). It includes engineering details like fully diff amp designs for sigma delta conversion, simulation techniques of a high multiplication ratio PLL, or serial-addressing RAM array. For project managers (and boss), "Sandbox" has useful and up-to-date materials like price info of typical wafer and photo-mask sets (pretty accurate), and some other useful thoughts (especially in chapter 3: Economics).
   
   Last chapter "Odds and Ends" is also so unique: "There are always dangling subjects...which don't fit in anywhere else, so I've reserved this chapter for sweeping up the floor and making use of what I find..." Read that chapter carefully, and you may save 2 - 3 mask sets that may cost tens of hundred thousand dollars.
   
   Summary: For low-noise mix-signal design project reference, "Sandbox" is even more useful than Jacob Baker's book, or Hastings' "art of analog layout". Recommended to read together with Johan Huijsing's design series together.

4 comments about Basic Electricity: A Self-Teaching Guide (Wiley Self-Teaching Guides).

1. This is a VERY good introduction if you know absolutely nothing about electricity. The clarity of explanation, the organization of the material, and the self-test exercises help you to build a very solid knowledge of this important field. New material is introduced very gradually and smoothly.



2. This is a fantastic book. If you know nothing about electricaty and want to this is the book to get. It is in a workbook format and walks you through step by step. It makes a great reference guide was well. Highley recomended.



3. This is a very good book for the true beginner. You learn the basics of resistance, power, capacitance and inductances, and some stuff on motors. If you like simple, easy to follow pictures, this is a good book. However, there is also something lacking. What's lacking is up-to-date information--an idea of how to do useful things with useful components, such as IC's, microcontrollers, etc. I think it's a great book for the basic concepts, but not very good for practical applications. The book was written some time ago, so you can expect this to be the case.



4. I found the book helpful in reviewing basic electricity as I've been out of school for a number of years. I wasn't impressed with the experiments and lab exercises presented in the book though; the author could have done a better job of presenting those. It would be rather difficult to actually do these lab exercises as presented, you'd probably need to look for other sources to really set up the lab exercises unless you already have a lot of electrical skill.

1 comments about Electromagnetic Vibrations, Waves, and Radiation.

1. This is a excellent text for undergraduates in physics or EE to understand the fundamental electromagnetic properties of vibrations, waves and radiation. It supplements Purcell's very well. Having studied it, you are equipped with solid understanding and can go on into Optics.

5 comments about Electromagnetism.

1. Goes into much more detail than other undergraduate E&M texts, so it will never leave you hanging on the math. Discussion is also extremely clear and easy to follow. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is taking an undergraduate E&M course.



2. I used this book for a 2 semester course in E&M. I absolutely hated it for the first semester, but it's merits became apparent during the second semester. The treatment of statics is inadequate at best, but Pollack and Stump do a great job from the chapter on Maxwell's equations on. The chapter on relativity and tensors alone makes this book a worthwhile buy. I would suggest using Griffith's for statics and Pollack and Stump for dynamics, but given the cost of both books thats probably going to be an expensive proposition.



3. Whether you are a student in engineering or physics field, you should get this book. The author is terrific in explaining things. It's complete and to-the-point. After reading this book, not only would your understanding of E/M increase tenfold, your mathematical ability strengthens along with it too!
   
   This book is not really for 100% beginner. You must be rather well versed in vector calculus.
   
   My only complaint about this book is that only about 3 pages are devoted to discussing numerical methods, which is not sufficient from my point of view. Despite this shortcoming, THIS BOOK IS BY FAR THE BEST!!! Buy it with Griffith's book, this is ALL you'll ever need to learn E/M!!



4. The authors achieved a very interesting balance between the mathematical level and the introductory nature of the book (if you don't already master the math, you will have to learn it in order to understand the text... which is good). It has a good number of worked out examples, and the problems are challenging without being unsolvable. One characteristic of these is that they require a good comprehension of the material and therefore, you will not go on to the next chapter without learning the material (hopefully). The structure of the book is pretty much standard. Mathematically, the book is not self-contained, but that does not affect my rating because it is not intended to be. With a good foundation (or book) in vector calculus and maybe a more elementary book in E&M (Griffiths? Yeah, I agree with a previous reviewer that it might be an expensive proposition), you will be more than ready to learn E&M.



5. I love this book, and I don't really like electromagnetism. Pollack and Stump use an easily understood writing style that is concise, thorough, and occasionally witty. Their use of extensive examples is great for the visual learner. This book covers a full academic year's worth of advanced electricity and magnetism courses.

5 comments about Homemade Lightning: Creative Experiments in Electricity.

1. This book is eye opening in that it awakens you to the fact that many traditional explanations of electricity do not explain all of the properties of electricity. A wonderful reference work. The illustrations are old, perhaps because the research seemed to stop around the 1930's. His chapter 6 on "Theories of generator operation" is excellent. His statement that "It is fair to say that there are as many theories as there are inventors of original generator designs." inspirers you to learn about all of the other designs. The book is packed with extensive references and I have recently acquired many of them. Although his references concerning Nikola Tesla are not pronounced, at least he mentions him in chapter 21 "Some philosophical conclusions and insights". Final answer: If I lose the book, I'll buy another!



2. Homemade lightening is only really valuable for it's in depth explanation of the authors own devices. There is also a lack of explanation of electrical theory in this book which the author probably justifies by saying that it doesn't have a strong basis anyways. Since throughout the later chapters he lividly explains how current theories have huge holes in them. The latter half of the book works outside of everything you've ever learned about physics, which was something of a disappointment. Some solid explanation of electrostatic principles with updated graphics would have been much more satisfying then the chronology of weirdness presented at the end. The total effect of first, not explaining electrostatic principles, and then providing highly technical and unsolved problems to the reader, leaves the reading either, in awe of R.A. Ford, or simply confused. A.D. Moore's Electrostatics is better for understanding electrostatics and for not having odd theories thrown at you. Another thing, Ford keeps saying how you should `visualize' the electric field to understand it, yet he only has one diagram of fields, and that's of gravity.



3. I'm well into it now, so I've gotta finish, but damn! This thing is neither cheap nor easy to build.
   
   At a casual glance, the instructions look fairly straight forward, but once you've got your materials (a shopping list at the beginning would be super helpful) you realize that the drawings leave some things to be desired (like, in many cases, dimensions)...if the drawing you're looking for is there at all. With a little head-scratching though you can sort it all out.
   
   I've spent somewhere between $250 and $300 on the materials alone. You can buy a Wimhurst kit from Edmund Scientific for $120 but, y'know... its not as cool as making your own...
   
   Tool-wise, its good to either have, or know somebody who has a drill press, lathe, router and various saws and sanders. I don't mind 'cause I'm a tool junkie- I needed a (good-ish) excuse to buy a lathe- but start factoring that in to your overall cost...
   
   All that said though, the plans for the dirod in A.D. Moore's book don't look any clearer.
   
   If you want to build your own spark machine, its probably good to understand the principle behind the machines and just start going at it. The drawings and diagrams in the book are good for setting you off in the right direction if nothing else... after all: the first people to develop these machines started off with nothing more than an idea- you get to start with some reasonably good drawings and a knowledge that if you stick close to the plans you'll get something that works.



4. There's a lot of material floating around the web and bookstores that deals with Tesla and related topics. However, when it comes to good old fashion electro-statics, there is no where near the same volume of information. In fact, I've found four books pretty much cover the field -- at least for my money. Something to consider when contemplating a purchase of books on niche subjects such as electrostatics, books tend to go out of print rather fast. The print runs are small, and often the author or publisher will not reprint. This means, get the book while you can. It might be oop and only available on the secondary collectors market later.
   
   Homemade Lightning (R.A. Ford) -- If you are interested in putting together an electrostatic device, this is the book for you. Lots of how-to with pictures and explanation. I think as a first book this is your best bet. And as a book for creating running examples, this is your best bet. However, I don't believe I would want to have just one book on the subject. The other three books mentioned below add their own dimension to the subject and are (in my opinion) worth the few dollars needed to create a mini-library on the subject.
   
   Electrostatic Experiments (G.W. Francis) -- The subtitle for this book is "An encyclopedia of early electrostatic experiments, demonstrations, devices, and apparatus." The book lives up to its name. A great book for an overview of the field. I know it sounds a little silly, but the nice bright white paper and crisp illustrations are a real boon to this book. The font is well chosen and the leading is easy to read. In this book you will find reference to odd-ball experiments that other books just don't get around to talking about. For example, Eggs illuminated. (p.200) and Illumination of oranges (p.201). If you are looking for demonstrations or ideas for creating new displays for lecture or theater, this book has plenty of inspiration.
   
   Electrostatics (A.D. Moore) -- A nice home experiments how-to book. The book is a little chatty in parts. I liked this. The author speaks with a direct, sitting across the table, style.
   
   Static Electricity (J.H. Pepper) -- This material is extracted fom Cyclopaedic Science Simplified 1889. I use this for historical reasons and to poke around in. The book since it was written in 1889 assumes a fair degree of background by the reader. Great pictures and some nice explanations of how things work. You just need to be able to penetrate the older text.



5. This is a good book for the experimenter in us all. You can build and experiment with electrostatics.