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Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics
Learn the hows and whys behind basic electricity, electronics, and communications without formal training The best combination self-teaching guide, home reference, and classroom text on electricity and electronics has been updated to deliver the latest advances. Great for preparing for amateur and commercial licensing exams, this guide has been prized by thousands of students and professionals for its uniquely thorough coverage ranging from DC and AC concepts to semiconductors and integrated circuits.
698 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2006
177 people are currently reading
660 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 30, 2018
Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics by Stan Gibilisco is a self-teaching guide that covers a great deal of material. The author suggests taking it in at about a chapter every week or so. A lot of this material is a review to me, so I can go through it slightly faster. However, once it got to things I am not as familiar with I did have to slow down a bit.
First off though, this book does contain stuff that might be dangerous if you mess with it. Electricity is deadly if misused. It only takes about 200 milliamps of current across your heart to kill you, so keep that in mind.
The book starts out with the basics of electricity. What is it? Where does it come from? What are atoms? Other questions of this nature are covered pretty heavily. It builds on itself as most educational books do. All of the drawings and illustrations are quite illuminating and easy to understand. Moreover, the book contains quiz questions at the end of each chapter to test your understanding of the subject covered.
The book gets into the more exciting parts pretty quickly, but it does have to cover meters and other methods to measure electrical and electronic phenomena. The book really takes off when it gets into Ohm’s Law and Circuit Schematics. Ohm’s Law hardly needs any introduction to the initiated. It’s such a fundamental equation to circuit analysis that to do anything without it would be like running a marathon without legs or typing without hands. It looks a bit different to me since it uses an “E” for the voltage rather than a “V” but that isn’t a significant difference. So it comes across as E = I * R. Anything you want to know about the circuit can be figured out from this equation. So, the section on Circuit Analysis uses Ohm’s Law and tells us how to combine resistances. For resistances in series you just add. For resistances in parallel, you add the reciprocals. It is as simple as that. Finally, it adds in Kirchhoff’s Laws into the mix of tools and you can do a lot of things.
Anyway, the book starts out with Direct Current Circuits and Components. It moves on to Alternating Current and Components. Electronics is covered in the third part with Semiconductors and Transformers and stuff. The final part is focused on Specialized Devices and Systems.
So once you get into Alternating Current, it introduces Imaginary Numbers and other mathematical things that didn’t have applications at first. Of course, there is also the application of trigonometry and pi and those things are pretty useful. So there’s a ton of new ideas in AC that isn’t covered in DC. Phases, Root Mean Square, Amplitude, and frequency; all of that is covered. It even talks about something I never knew, namely that DC travels more efficiently at extremely high voltages. I just thought it was favored because it was safer on Edison’s end.
On another note, it also talks about computers and the internet. It isn’t the main focus of the book, so I am fine with it being put into one chapter, but I don’t really know why this stuff was put in at all. I mean, if I wanted to know about that I would have gotten a book focused on that in particular.
Aside from the book being really awesome, the cover just strikes me as unusual. Why is there ice cream on the cover? I don’t really understand that particular detail. It also has the electronic components on it as well, so I suppose that is fine, but I just can’t wrap my head around that. All in all, this book is really good for a refresher or if you are learning on your own.
First off though, this book does contain stuff that might be dangerous if you mess with it. Electricity is deadly if misused. It only takes about 200 milliamps of current across your heart to kill you, so keep that in mind.
The book starts out with the basics of electricity. What is it? Where does it come from? What are atoms? Other questions of this nature are covered pretty heavily. It builds on itself as most educational books do. All of the drawings and illustrations are quite illuminating and easy to understand. Moreover, the book contains quiz questions at the end of each chapter to test your understanding of the subject covered.
The book gets into the more exciting parts pretty quickly, but it does have to cover meters and other methods to measure electrical and electronic phenomena. The book really takes off when it gets into Ohm’s Law and Circuit Schematics. Ohm’s Law hardly needs any introduction to the initiated. It’s such a fundamental equation to circuit analysis that to do anything without it would be like running a marathon without legs or typing without hands. It looks a bit different to me since it uses an “E” for the voltage rather than a “V” but that isn’t a significant difference. So it comes across as E = I * R. Anything you want to know about the circuit can be figured out from this equation. So, the section on Circuit Analysis uses Ohm’s Law and tells us how to combine resistances. For resistances in series you just add. For resistances in parallel, you add the reciprocals. It is as simple as that. Finally, it adds in Kirchhoff’s Laws into the mix of tools and you can do a lot of things.
Anyway, the book starts out with Direct Current Circuits and Components. It moves on to Alternating Current and Components. Electronics is covered in the third part with Semiconductors and Transformers and stuff. The final part is focused on Specialized Devices and Systems.
So once you get into Alternating Current, it introduces Imaginary Numbers and other mathematical things that didn’t have applications at first. Of course, there is also the application of trigonometry and pi and those things are pretty useful. So there’s a ton of new ideas in AC that isn’t covered in DC. Phases, Root Mean Square, Amplitude, and frequency; all of that is covered. It even talks about something I never knew, namely that DC travels more efficiently at extremely high voltages. I just thought it was favored because it was safer on Edison’s end.
On another note, it also talks about computers and the internet. It isn’t the main focus of the book, so I am fine with it being put into one chapter, but I don’t really know why this stuff was put in at all. I mean, if I wanted to know about that I would have gotten a book focused on that in particular.
Aside from the book being really awesome, the cover just strikes me as unusual. Why is there ice cream on the cover? I don’t really understand that particular detail. It also has the electronic components on it as well, so I suppose that is fine, but I just can’t wrap my head around that. All in all, this book is really good for a refresher or if you are learning on your own.
October 13, 2010
I was hoping that this book would teach me about the nature of electricity -- sort of an "Electricity for Dummies" that would explain the difference between amps, watts, volts, and all that. But it was more of a wiring book; I didn't get much out of it.
July 9, 2020
This is a fine book. I got it for Christmas when I was a teenager, at the recommendation of a friend. It's by far the best book I've ever found to explain electricity to the beginner and the keen layman. It amazes me, too, in its scope.
August 7, 2007
Oh wow! This book is overwhelming, but I love it because it has tests at the end of every chapter. Dense- I have made a lot of notes just because the subject is so huge. Great diagrams too!!
March 19, 2009
The electricity parts were good. The electronics sections were extremely dull and on top of that, weren't even written well enough to make good sense.
April 13, 2010
I need to wait until I have some of the tools. It's easy to read and follow, but the stuff won't stay in my head if I don't apply it mechanically.
Currently reading
February 24, 2013This book was reccommended to us by our electromagnetism instructor saying that it is a comprehensive and a good book for one who wants to learn about electronics.
September 18, 2019
I'll credit the authors for their ambition in writing such a comprehensive tome. There's no denying the depth that they delve... well, on certain subjects... well, on certain parts of certain subjects.
The authors commit a common error with this book: in an effort to cover everything, they can't cover everything. Many times, especially in the second half, while pouring diligently through, I found myself encountering a concept, schematic symbol, or component that had never been mentioned before, much less defined and explained. Did i miss it in an earlier section? I'd check the index, and sure enough, it's not found. More than once, i had to go to the internet and YouTube to teach myself how to read this Teach Yourself book.
It's disappointing. The authors clearly know their stuff. But perhaps, they know so much that they can't always recognize when "obvious" things, aren't.
So far, this may seem like a pan, but it's 3 stars (rather than fewer) for a reason. The first half is generally well written and sensible. If you're willing to recognize its flaws and use external resources, it can be a perfectly serviceable primer on how electricity and electronics work. I'd recommend borrowing it from the library, getting what you can from it, then pursuing more targeted learning avenues elsewhere.
The authors commit a common error with this book: in an effort to cover everything, they can't cover everything. Many times, especially in the second half, while pouring diligently through, I found myself encountering a concept, schematic symbol, or component that had never been mentioned before, much less defined and explained. Did i miss it in an earlier section? I'd check the index, and sure enough, it's not found. More than once, i had to go to the internet and YouTube to teach myself how to read this Teach Yourself book.
It's disappointing. The authors clearly know their stuff. But perhaps, they know so much that they can't always recognize when "obvious" things, aren't.
So far, this may seem like a pan, but it's 3 stars (rather than fewer) for a reason. The first half is generally well written and sensible. If you're willing to recognize its flaws and use external resources, it can be a perfectly serviceable primer on how electricity and electronics work. I'd recommend borrowing it from the library, getting what you can from it, then pursuing more targeted learning avenues elsewhere.
October 22, 2020
the book was at the beginning very valuable and explains very important lessons of electricity with exercises. i really learned from the first 3 parts of the book . then it starts more and more out of the subject . anyway it is good for starters
February 24, 2021
I only read the chapters I was interested in.
December 12, 2014
Hahaha! Might as well include books I've read during review days.
Explanations regarding basic principles on electricity were good. There were questions at the end of every chapter to test yourself. The technology part, however, was not interesting to read probably because it was published almost a decade ago.
Explanations regarding basic principles on electricity were good. There were questions at the end of every chapter to test yourself. The technology part, however, was not interesting to read probably because it was published almost a decade ago.
October 19, 2012
Electricity
4-5
4-5
Read
December 1, 2013Very informative.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews