Preface
The First Word
Wow, the success of the original edition of Electrical Engineering 101 has been amazing. I have had fans from all over the world comment on it and how the book has helped them. The response has been all I ever hoped for—so much so that I get a chance to add to it and make an even better version.
Of course, these days you don’t just get a second edition, you get a better edition. This time through, you will get more insight into the topics (maybe a few new topics too), a hardcover with color diagrams, and hopefully a few more chuckles1 that mostly only we nerdy types will understand.
If you want to know what this book is all about, here is my original preface:
The intent of this book is to cover the basics that I believe have been either left out of your education or forgotten over time. Hopefully it will become one of those well-worn texts that you drop on the desk of the new guy when he asks you a question. There is something for every student, engineer, manager, and teacher in electrical engineering. My mantra is, “It ain’t all that hard!” Years ago I had a counselor in college tell me proudly that they flunked out over half the students who started the engineering program. Needing to stay on her good side, I didn’t say much at the time. I always wondered, though. If you fail so many students, isn’t that really a failure to teach the subject well? I say “It ain’t all that hard” to emphasize that even a hick with bad grammar like me can understand the world of electrical engineering. This means you can too! I take a different stance than that counselor of years ago, asserting that everyone who wants to can understand this subject. I believe that way more than 50% of the people who read this book will get something out of it. It would be nice to show the statistics to that counselor some day; she was encouraging me to drop out when she made her comment. So good luck, read on, and prove me right: It ain’t all that hard!
Well, that about says it all. If you do decide to give this book a chance, I want to say thank you, and I hope it brings you success in all you do!
Overview
For Engineers
Granted, there are many good teachers out there and you might have gotten the basics, but time and too many “status reports” have dulled the finish on your basic knowledge set. If you are like me, you have found a few really good books that you often pull off the shelf in a time of need. They usually have a well-written, easy-to-understand explanation of the particular topic you need to apply. I hope this will be one of those books for you.
You might also be a fish out of water, an ME thrown into the world of electrical engineering, and you would really like a basic understanding to work with the EEs around you. If you get a really good understanding of these principles, I guarantee you will surprise at least some of the “sparkies” (as I like to call them) with your intuitive insights into problems at hand.
For Students
I don’t mean to knock the collegiate educational system, but it seems to me that too often we can pass a class in school with the “assimilate and regurgitate” method. You know what I mean: Go to class, soak up all the things the teacher wants you to know, take the test, say the right things at the right time, and leave the class without an ounce of applicable knowledge. I think many students are forced into this mode when teachers do not take the time to lay the groundwork for the subject they are covering. Students are so hard-pressed to simply keep up that they do not feel the light bulb go on over their heads or say, “Aha, now I get it!” The reality is, if you leave the class with a fundamental understanding of the topic and you know that topic by heart, you will be eminently more successful applying that basic knowledge than anything from the end of the syllabus for that class.
For Managers
The job of the engineering manager2really should have more to it than is depicted by the pointy-haired boss you see in Dilbert cartoons. One thing many managers do not know about engineers is that they welcome truly insightful takes on whatever they might be working on. Please notice I said “truly insightful”; you can’t just spout off some acronym you heard in the lunchroom and expect engineers to pay attention. However, if you understand these basics, I am sure there will be times when you will be able to point your engineers in the right direction. You will be happy to keep the project moving forward, and they will gain a new respect for their boss. (They might even put away their pointy-haired doll!)
For Teachers
Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that all teachers are bad; in fact mostof my teachers (barring one or two) were really good instructors. However, sometimes I think the system is flawed. Given pressures from the dean to cover X, Y, and Z topics, sometimes the more fundamental X and Y are sacrificed just to get to topic Z.
I did get a chance to teach a semester at my own alma mater. Some of these chapters are directly from that class. My hope for teachers is to give you another tool that you can use to flip the switch on the “Aha” light bulbs over your students’ heads.
For Everyone
At the end of each topic discussed in this book are bullet points I like to call Thumb Rules. They are what they seem: those “rule-of-thumb” concepts that really good engineers seem to just know. These concepts are what always led them to the right conclusions and solutions to problems. If you get bored with a section, make sure to hit the Thumb Rules anyway. There you will get the distilled core concepts that you really should know.