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Title: Introduction to Electric Circuits by Richard C. Dorf, James A. Svoboda ISBN: 0-471-44795-1 Publisher: Wiley Text Books Pub. Date: 06 June, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $116.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.47 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Not bad, could use some proofreading
Comment: It's a mixed book. The exposition is fairly clear with plenty of worked examples and additional problems with answers. This is particularly good for people teaching themselves the material who need lots of practice and can't go to their TA's for help.
The book does use some calculus, but not an unreasonable amount. Some material is easier to understand given the proper mathematical tools and I believe that most of the author's use of calculus in the text is appropriate. There are a couple of exercises that require integration by parts, which I do not consider reasonable. There are also a couple of exercises that result in large, ugly polynomials to be simplified. Perhaps there are ways to avoid these given a cleverer approach than mine. Overall the math isn't excessive, the explanations are clear and there are only a few "What the %*@&!#! are you talking about?!?" moments.
The authors do appear to have been somewhat sloppy about proofreading their text and there are errors not in the official errata sheet. Some are small, like the inductor that mistakenly got assigned a resistor symbol. Some are more serious, like the inductor value that was off by a factor of 10 in one of the excercises. And of course there is the statement on page 8 of the sixth edition that says that the Internet was established in 1995. I guess that this must have been what Al Gore was talking about.
Oh and beware the "Electric Circuit Study Applets." I did finally get them to work, although the process was quite painful. There is no CD included with the book. The reader is required to go to the website, type in a access key, register and so on. The applets are very large java files that take a long time to download. My browser kept dying halfway through the process and it took many tries before the entire process worked. I still haven't managed to get the worked examples pdf file to load properly.
Rating: 1
Summary: Sloppily written and sloppily designed
Comment: Overall, I found that this book is usable, but sloppily written and sloppily produced. Some of examples of this sloppiness:
1) The authors are very sloppy with their units; they derive equations like "v = 2 * i", where "v" is a voltage and "i" is a current, and then substitute something like "i = 2 amps" into the equation and get "v = 4 volts". What happened to the units?! They should have written something like "v = (2 volts/amp) * i", because an amp is not equal to a volt!!! The author of my physics textbook was very careful in making sure all his equations were dimensionally-correct: why couldn't Dorf & Svoboda, in their 6th ed, have exercised a little more care? This is especially annoying when dealing with units like nanofarads and milliamps, because you have to make sure than the powers-of-ten work out right.
2) The circuit diagrams for the exercises are located in a confusing manner, so that it is easy, for example, to mistakenly use Figure P5.4.2 for exercise #5.4-3, especially since the wrong figure is right next to the exercise and the correct figure is in the location farthest away from it on the page (i.e., the exercise text on the bottom of the first column and the diagram is on the top of the next column). Putting the diagram next to the exercise and separating consecutive exercises with a horizontal line would have helped a lot here.
3) The authors use the notation "dv(0)/dt" to mean the rate-of-change of v(t) with respect to time, evaluated at t=0. However, this is easily misinterpreted to mean the rate-of-change of v(0) with respect to time, which is identically zero, because v(0) is a constant. Why don't they just use the standard mathematical notation "v'(0)" (where the single-quote is supposed to be the PRIME symbol), which is less bulky and less ambiguous?
4) Near the beginning of the book, the author integrates power from negative infinity to time t, and says that the value of this integral is the energy absorbed by the resistor. What?! How do you define what the power of the resistor was at time t = 900 trillion years ago? According the current scientific belief, the universe itself didn't even exist 900 trillion years ago, never mind the resistor. And even ignoring the physical universe, their improper integral isn't even defined unless p(t) is a decaying exponential or something else whose integral converges. So why not just integrate from time t_0 instead of from negative infinity?
Note: To do well in a course using this book, you should have taken or be currently taking a course in Dif. Eqn. & Lin. Alg., because this book requires you to know this material but presents it in a manner designed to confuse even those who already know it well.
Rating: 1
Summary: Useless book
Comment: This book is the most useless text that could be used in a first year electric circuits course. As the other reviewers have pointed out, the examples do not relate to the material which has been covered in the chapter. The extensive use of calculus in my opinion is also not necessary, and is the work of a complete academic. The idea of a first year circuits class is to teach the student methods of basic circuit analysis and how circuits can relate to the real world. If you really want to learn how circuits work I highly reccomend that you do not waste your time with this book. I must also like to point out that some other reviewers have slandered reviews such as mine. More specifically, these individuals appear to think that only "simple minded morons" or "dumb jocks" share the same opinion as mine towads this book. To prove these individuals wrong, I happen to be an Electrical Engineer and an Electronics Technician - and I still think that this book is for complete academics who have no respect for the educational benefit of the reader.
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Title: Materials Science and Engineering : An Introduction by William D. Callister ISBN: 0471135763 Publisher: Wiley Text Books Pub. Date: 26 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $124.95 |
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Title: Basic Technical Mathematics with Calculus (7th Edition) by Allyn J. Washington ISBN: 0201356651 Publisher: Pearson Addison Wesley Pub. Date: 05 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $120.00 |
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Title: Microelectronic Circuits (Oxford Series in Electrical Engineering) by Adel S. Sedra, Kenneth C. Smith ISBN: 0195116631 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $112.00 |
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Title: A First Course in Differential Equations with Modeling Applications by Dennis G. Zill ISBN: 0534379990 Publisher: Brooks Cole Pub. Date: 05 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $116.95 |
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Title: Electric Circuits Revised and PSpice Supplement Package, Sixth Edition by James W. Nilsson, Susan Riedel ISBN: 0130770795 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 27 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $116.00 |
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