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My EE lecturer described Forrest Mims as the single largest source of brain damage in the EE community. Unlearning the abstractions in those books was a common

• HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Wonder what they meant by that. I had two Forrest Mims books in high school and they were a large part of what made me become an EE.
  • quercusa 4y ago
    Same. I suspect the prof wanted students to think of components as their mathematical models, not using any analogical sense. You can only do that when you have the mathematics to do so.
• 99_00 4y ago
  I assume you mean analogy not abstraction. At the high school level it's common to teach electronics by analogy it's not exclusive to Mims.
  • a9h74j 4y ago
    My high school electronics teacher stayed in his office muttering "I know enough mathematics to be an engineer." ... while we dry-lab'd all our circuits at our benches.
• bsder 4y ago
  Really? What in particular? I have heard that (rightfully!) said about "Art of Electronics" but this is the first time I have seen Mims mentioned similarly. The biggest problem I have with everybody is being taught "electrons are flowing". I understand that teachers don't want to go down the rabbit hole of "waves are transmitting the power" but it would sure help if teachers would at least mention that electrons flowing is a "good enough" analogy and not physical reality.
  • zrobotics 4y ago
    My undergrad prof didn't call out moms specifically, but was very negative towards any sort of mention of hobby/amateur electronics. For him, it was specifically because he thought that the only way to learn the basics was to have the calc & physics underpinning first before even knowing what the components actually do. This was in reference to overhearing a classmate explaining to someone why anyone would care about a capacitor. It was typical undergrad physics material discussing the mathematics behind a capacitor, and this person was mentioning some of the real-world uses like filtering. I clearly remember the prof saying "oh, you're one of those hobbyists" followed by something to the effect of that we were there to learn, not play around. Basically, just an elitist attitude that the proper way to learn about electronics is to start with the math, and anything else wasn't proper engineering. Which is sad, b/c from what I remember Forrest Mims' books are actually some of the best intro electronics info available, since he doesn't gloss over the complexity but still writes in a way that doesn't require 2 semesters of calculus to understand.
    • marmetio 4y ago
      Seems like he wasn't up to the challenge of teaching basic information to people who expressed an interest in the topic as kids.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      > I clearly remember the prof saying "oh, you're one of those hobbyists" I have a very different, and more pleasant, memory of walking into a 3rd-year Electromagnetic Fields class that had some stuff on the board leftover from a senior-year "Microwaves and Radar" class. Prof said, "half a point on the midterm to anyone who knows what that diagram is." I glanced up, said, "Smith chart" and went back to getting my assignment out. He stared at me in surprise and said "Oh, we have a ham in the room!" Don't remember if I ever got my 0.5 point increase though. I do remember barely passing that class!
  • wrldos 4y ago
    Was short on time yesterday. Will elaborate today. It's a little different from the abstractions, which are of course, poor but that's less important. There are two Mims camps as a rule. Those who bought the books and perhaps read them and didn't build anything and have fond memories. Then there were those of us who actually build stuff out of the books and experienced the hell that is debugging a poor design with no skills or knowledge. My entire early days of electronics were unfortunately constrained by these books. The only reason the books existed was they looked cheap, cute and simple enough for Radio Shack to sell lots of copies and use that to leverage a hobby industry. They were not quality material and in fact were quite frustrating and destructive. Throw on the dubious quality of some of the components on the market back then (fuck you Radio Shack MPF102) and it was a mess. Regarding The Art of Electronics, I was given the first edition of this back in the late 1980s and jumped right in. Whilst light on theory intentionally, the book is actually backed up by a lot of professional experience in the industry. There is a student guide/laboratory manual that goes with it that deals with the applied side of it as well so at a basic level they should be considered together. This book turned everything around and led to an EE career. Roll on a few years from there, I had managed to self teach away most of the nasty, learned algebra at school, jumped into theoretical side via Sedra/Smith. After that everything worked every time. I have a box of 35 year old failures somewhere I will analyse at some point. I did consider opening a YT channel for this but time does not currently allow.
• JKCalhoun 4y ago
  My experience with Forrest Mims were primarily with his Engineer's Mini Notebooks that Radio Shack published. I don't actual remember much if any in the way of electronic theory/abstractions in those notebooks. I know he had a column for Popular Electronics but these also primarily detailed hobbyist projects. I think there might be two kinds of electronics enthusiasts: the hobbyist and the EE major. For those like myself where electronics is a hobby, Forrest was something of a hero.