On Jan 14, 2004, at 10:39 AM, Neil Bradley wrote:
>>> question. Good thing I'm smart enough to admit I'm
>>> stupid. ;)
>> I wouldn't go that far, how about just uninformed? ^_^ I'm still
>> building a mental model about how this whole "electricity" thing works
>> too. It's very strange to a software engineer...
>
> My father taught me electronics at a very early age and the best
> analogy
> at the time was this:
>
> Voltage = How fast the water is flowing
> Current = How much water is flowing
> Resistance = Anything that restricts the flow
yeah, I've heard that one. it breaks down rapidly as soon as you start
to do anything complex though. i personally think that analogy is a
barrier to understanding single flow, and should be the first thing one
abandons when trying to learn this stuff "for real."
i'm finding there's no substitute for experimentation, and an
oscilloscope ;) my understanding of all this grew ten fold after I
could watch the circuits do their thing in a scope. (for fun stick a
scope in the output of a 48Khz virtual analog synth and compare a
square wave at 8khz to an 8khz square from the motm ;) ) i'm probably
learning all this stuff in a rather unorthodox manner as well. being a
software engineer I've started at the digital end of the spectrum, and
as a problem arises in the analog domain (signal integrity, etc) I
learn about how to fix the problem, what causes it, and of course, how
to diagnose it ;)
Hey more experienced people, other than the Art of Electronics, what
would you folks recommend for someone wanting to learn more about
analog electronics? I know you're lurking out there ^_^
--mikes