Introduction to Electric Circuits

Rating:
Summary: horrible
Review: dorf should have his neck rung. this book was required for my circuits class and i can only comment on chapters 1-10 but they were horrible. not only does dorf fail to adaquetly explain why things are the way they are to leave students with an understanding that will stay with them, he is long winded on irrelevant material such as when and how the light bulb was invented. a section of every chapter is devoded to history, and thats not what i want my money going to in a text (unless its a history class). furthermore his explanations of how things are (as supposed to why things are) are exceedingly inadaquite. the only way in which any usefull information is conveyed is through the sample problems, yet you will find that the sample problems do not cover everything that is needed to answer the problems in the back of the chapters. i can sum up everything i learned (i did do very well on my final) in 20 pages of hand written notes. this book is definetly a waste of time, the only thing [good] i can say for it is that the problems in the back of the chapters are of adaquite difficulty, if you can do them all, you should fair well in any introductory circuits class. And the reason this is the case is that all the problems are extreemly counterintuitive and most circuits are drawn in such a way that would never ever for any purpose, aside learning how to solder, be produced that way.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, could use some proofreading
Review: 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:
Summary: Sloppily written and sloppily designed
Review: 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:
Summary: One of the Most complete books on the subject
Review: The reason why I consider this book to be one of the most complete books on electrical circuits analysis is because the author combines real life with the mathematical modelling, giving you a complete idea with what you're handling. I definetely believe that this is a book for persons which have a solid foundations in physics and mathematics. It also gives an introduction to the tools that are use in the design of linear control systems and a brief introduction to filter theory and active network analysis methods.

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: This book is great for smart people, but it's apparently too much for simple minded morons to comprehend. If you are a smart math and science person - this book is worthy of your superior
abilities. If you are a dumb jock or an wannabe intellectual, go back to elementary school and play with yourself some more.

Rating:
Summary: For intro. electric circuits, an instructor is recommended
Review: This book is supposed to be taught hand in hand with calculus. The two supplement eachother. You must know calculus at the very least, and better yet a solid undertanding of elementary differential equations. The end of chapter problems are well laid out and varied. There are design, verification, and complete analytical problems. The book introduces the concept behind being able to look at a circuit and analyzing key components such as voltage, current, resistance, inductance, capacitance, impedence, by using KVL, KCL, mesh analysis, superpostion, and other key techniques. Good book but the very long errata for this book means only 3 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Useless book
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not too good, Not too bad
Review: This book isn't really as horrible as other reviews indicate. The basic fact is that you gotta have a strong foundation in calculus and basic physics before trying to take on this book. I strongly reccomend these pre-requisites are very crucial in order to understand even little bit of what goes on inside this book. I agree ithe book is very confusing for a beginner or a person who's totally new into circuits but in my opinion the whole thing depends on how strong your background is in calculus and university phsyics. For me the book works, i haven't encountered much difficulty although i did have to struggle sometimes with some chapter problems in the book. Overall, i'd give this book 7 and a half out of 10, on a scale of 0 to 10.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Use This Book!
Review: This is, to date, one of the worst textbooks I have been made to use in a college class. The text does _not_ give general formule for the principles it explains, but instead uses numbers almost exclusively in example problems, leaving the student to wonder just what is really going on. Every week, when I sit down to work my Circuits I homework, I feel like hanging Dorf and Svoboda by their mustaches - all because this book is so wretched. The end-of-chapter problems are useless to help understand concepts, as they frequently do not relate adequately to the material presented in each section.

If you ever read this, Dorf, Svoboda, please stop trying to confuse students with your work. If you want to teach, teach. If you want to be confusing, go into law.