Doing Electrical Engineering: Build it, Understand it
James M. Henson
University of Nevada, Reno
Dana McPherson
University of Nevada, Reno
If I Can’t Build it, I Don’t Understand it. – Richard Feynman
Designing and building useful things that actually work is intrinsically more attractive to today’s students than memorizing formulas and solving for values in circuits that don’t do anything. It’s why many students are first attracted to engineering. Let’s keep them in engineering. Doing Electrical Engineering provides a hands-on learning approach for freshman Electrical Engineering students. This book is for you (and your students) if you are teaching or planning to introduce an introductory freshman course in Electrical Engineering. It’s designed for readers who have passion and a penchant for designing physical systems, and for educators just like us who want to stir up the curriculum.
Doing Electrical Engineering clears up many of the mysteries and misconceptions that plague even senior and graduate EE students. Using this book and the materials that go along with it prepares students to understand and appreciate the more advanced material and concepts introduced later in the curriculum. Indeed, if you are a junior or senior EE student or hobbyist, you may well find yourself reading this book, working on the projects, and LOVING IT!
Electrical engineering does NOT spring from the field of mathematics. On the contrary! Hence, very little background in mathematics is required on the part of the reader. Doing Electrical Engineering introduces the necessary mathematics in an uncomplicated, integrated, practical fashion. You may even find that this book turns you into a much better mathematician!
This book is written with the philosophy espoused by our publisher. The learning process is most rewarding if you build up an intuitive understanding of concepts by pausing to tinker, explore, and reflect. We have followed this philosophy in writing our book with the expectation that it be will used alongside your own portable laboratory. Fortunately, now this is possible with the recently released NI myDAQ. National Instruments myDAQ is a transformational tool, which will capture the interest, excitement, and imagination of freshmen Electrical Engineering students.
Take a look on YouTube to see some examples, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1_DW56iwSU
Our book may be ordered together with NI myDAQ, Multisim, and Labview -http://www.studica.com/NImyDAQ/
