Several months ago I started reading Understanding Basic Electronics, 2nd Edition, released this year by the ARRL. I was just nearly finished with it when I decided I should get serious about studying for comps. Last week I picked it back up and finished it.
During my Computer Science education I’ve only had one Electrical Engineering course, ELE335, Principles of Digital Systems. There was an accompanying lab where we played with logic gates, but there was no mention of resistors, capacitors, etc.
Over the past several years, both before and since getting my amateur radio license, I’ve picked up several beginners’ books on electronics. Understanding Basic Electronics is the best I’ve read so far. Most of the material was already familiar to me, but I learned and relearned several things.
It’s a relatively short and quick read. The chapters are broken into 2-3 page lessons. It covers all the basics: Ohm’s law, DC concepts, AC concepts, capacitance, inductance, power, frequency, transformers, impedance, resonant circuits, semiconductors, diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits. There are no experiments, as such, but it gives you a good base with which to move on to other books that do have experiments, like Make: Electronics.
It’s the first in a three book series. I already have the other two, Basic Radio and Basic Antennas, and I’ll be starting on them as soon as I catch up with the reading for my classes.