Download Electric Circuits ePub

After trying to read other electric circuits texts, such as by authors Dorf and Svoboda, this text is not easy but very understanable.
For example Nilsson covers parallel and series RLC circutis that lead straight to 2nd Order differential equations; but he manages to find common ground so the math appears similar for both types of RLC circuits. Nilsson uses symbols and math notation normally found in popular Differential Equations textbooks. This is great since some electric circuits authors generally like to develop their own notation set -- which for students makes learning much longer and harder.
Technical authors need to standardize math notation used in technical courses as a way to eliminate much of the inherent confusion that now exists in many technical textbooks. Authors quickly rushed to developing their own notation in order to later avoid publication problems dealing with plagiarism issues that some could later raise.
Also, Nilsson coverage of Laplace is also clear.
Problems at the end of chapter are typically way above the coverage of the chapter's material, but maybe someday all authors will stop doing this nonsense. Someday textbooks may even come packaged and sold with a partial solution manual to help students overcome difficult problems.
Gerard J. Sagliocca, P.E.
Albany, N Y (USA)

James W. Nilsson 2nd edition was a required text at Florida Atlantic Unviersity's Electrical Engineering Department at one time. The text was found to be difficult by most students to understand. Nilsson chose to quickly begin using Current and Voltage sources -- without too much detailed explanations.
Note, the usual general malady with most engineering textbooks is that they cover the material in the Chapters at "one level;" and then later authors ask questions at the end of the Chapters that are mostly beyond students' beginning "radar" ssytems. Most authors typically defend this writing technique by saying that it challenges the student by having students spend over 10 hours on any one problem and if they are lucky they may get an answer. But, at this slow rate it's no wonder that students hardly ever acquire a broad understanding of many key concepts, since they stay stuck at too many places in the first few chapters. This becomes a very INEFFICIENT educational delivery system in a Postmodern fast-moving world -- where knowledge's Bandwith speed is in the order of the many Mega bit per second range while the educational textbooks are at the Kilo bits per second range.
From a strictly cognitive position, this type of old fashion "educational" European-style methods helps not the students, but the educational "gatekeepers" who have a vested interest in holding back many talented students. The dropout rate in science and enginnering is alarming and society should take a real hard look at this silly mistake our eduators are making. Thus, their keeping this old European style in our American classrooms is bad.
Textbook writers MUST write for all students and not for some "pie-in-the-sky" ideal few while overly burdeing other students. Thus, today I'm suggesting that a Federal law mandating authors to write student-friendly textbooks. Normally, I wouldn't suggest this drastic measure but since the emotional pain and dropout rates are so alarmingly high every year, maybe someone should shoutout from some Rocky Mountain's top and say we must do better with writing textbooks. If authors don't want to change, then places like Amazon.com can greatly help persuade these old style writers to change, since the criticsm they will keep receiving will be unforgetabe and huge. A sample reading of other Amazon.com students shows that there is much dicontent with author Nilsson's texbook. Therefore, instead of authors encouraging and helping students learn faster by giving them all the information in a Chapter, authors force students to waste a lot of time chasing other students or teachers for more help. I now think that authors probably concocted these end-of-chapter problems.
Please note, that society spends many hundreds of billions of dollars a year on education; however, the damning results from this spending on textbooks, teachers and administrators are mostly discouraging and sometimes even dismal! Only a small percentage of students can learn or "survive" in this inimical educational old-fashioned environment, and textbook authors don't usually help much either. In most engineering curriculums textbooks got so foggy that Schaum Outlines became very popular among students. Other small companies have followed suit, by making technical subjects clearer with many types of Examples problems of varying difficulty.
Publisher's Role
Technical textbook must improve.
Publisher must also pitch-in by formating textbooks that cognitatively assist the reader read faster. Publishers can begin by first placing Diagrams and Figures very close to where the text discusses these particular diagrams. But since Publishers sometimes hire in-experienced workers, students can't expect too much creativity from publishers despite the fact that textbooks sticker prices have recently skyrocketed. Furthermore,these low-paid textbook workers could care less how they lay out a given textbook. They will be prone to slap it together and be done with it!
Moving to Videos and DVDs:
But why don't we forget about textbooks altogether and go directly to videos/DVDs which provide 3-d figures along with animation -- which greatly helps students cognitatively retain what they see longer! The printed word can only go so far, and moreover, if it's not written well, then it can be very difficult to comprehend. Most Postmodern students don't even bother reading these foggy rambling technical textbooks since they know from past bad experiences that most textbooks are just good door stoppers.
Adding Sound to Textbook
Hollywood discovered in the 1920's that silent movies were not as good as movies with a sound track added. So too society must find a way to add SOUND to textbooks in order to make them more useful and more effcient.
Lately, publishers are trying to add colors and even some CDROMs but these are only small steps, while publishers are disproportionatley forcing students to pay much higher prices for these pricey door stoppers. Publishers are changing editions every 2 years whether the textbook gets any significant change or not. Publishers are just ordering that authors comply with this corporate revision mandate. Students are now scarmbling for relief by buying used textbooks and older editions since students now realize that the textbook changes are minor in scope.
My Conclusions:
If Nilsson corrected his many errors in his textbook and then also gave the students ALL the info inside each chapter so they could do the difficult problems and then added CDROMs, then his textbook would start looking good. It may even begin to compete with the handful of best Circuit textbooks on the market today.
Laely, I'm beginning to become more encouraged that with Amazon.com publishing students real-life feedback to the whole Web world. Hopefully, these authors will get the clue that something is wrong with their old-fashion writing style/methods and perhaps begin making real substantial modifications to their textbooks. If they do, then life would become easier for everyone in American classrooms.
After authors have done making real changes to their books, then the final thing for authors to do is begin using the SAME math symbols so as to reduce the confusion. Some auhtors use different math symbols for the SAME device or concept. For example, if you get 100 authors writing an Algebra textbook, you will probably get 100 different symbology math set used by each author to convey the same algebra concepts. This is a nightmare. Most technical books do this sort of thing. This math symbology set situation isn't seen in the Literature or Philosophy textbooks or other Liberal Arts textbooks, it's a problem unique to technical authors.
Technical authors must believe that using new symbols set is wonderful; however, students think it's an added hardship while they are trying to learn new technical concepts!
So, come'on guys, let's think about the students and stop playing games. Communicate clearly for once and for all and be done with it. I just got done having a big discussion on these same sort of educational issues as above with an RPI alumni located in Troy, New York. What she told me would dismay or even horrify all technical students. She thinks it's wonderful stuff to write a textbook at "one level" and then ask students difficult questions for homework, for a project or for a college exam!
I told this adjunct instructor that she somehow got hypnotized or even brainwashed by the old European-style of teaching students. I think it's high time she, too, got modernized and began helping students by ordering well-written and well- formated textbooks.
Finally, some teachers calling their students stupid if they can't do the "end of chapter" problems of each textbook simply will not further modern educational reforms in any meaningful way.
I hope author, James W. Stilsson, is amenable and open-minded to effect textbook reforms and not add more unnecessary educational burdens to students.

Good for the price. I learned alot. Don't need the new edition. Not much detail though. You need an instructor. No self learning with this book in my opinion.

Upon doing the first homework assignments, this literally made me contemplate dropping electrical engineering in favor of something like industrial. Thankfully not all books are like this. As others have noted, the book doesn't provide answers. Immediate feedback is absolutly critical and an expected feature of a modern textbook. Next, this book assumes way too much--I'm an A science/math student and this book's had me completely confused. The first chapter's "drill exercises" had you using calculus before you even knew what you were doing. Another problem in the first section asks you to analyze a problem but doesn't even mention basics of parallel/series circuits and the effects they have on the circut. You have to look it up in another book! The book also gives you quite a length of rope adequate for a mass-hanging of yourself and your classmates. It really needs to start with one naive, simplified method and slowly introduce new concepts as you gain experience and understanding with what you have learned. I am woefully and needlessly confused with the explanations presented. This is absolute garbage.

Although many of the negative reviews of this book are based upon not having answers to all of the problems, there really is no problem here because the free Cadence PSpice software can be used to simulate any of the circuits and find the answers for any of the problems. The PSpice software also allows the student to vary the problems in an almost infinite variety of ways to try out ideas about what is going on in the circuit.
My own gripe about this book is its (almost) complete neglect of algebraic solutions. For example, reactances in most problems are given in Ohms (just numbers), and frequency doesn't even show up. This avoidance of frequency and of symbolic values for R,L,C makes the frequency and component dependencies of the circuit obscure, and doesn't prepare the student to use algebraic expressions to understand the qualitative behavior of the circuit.
Sinusoidal steady-state analysis (which largely suffers from the above complaint) doesn't show up until p. 441!! Real frequency dependence doesn't show up until Bode Diagrams on p. 736!!
The combination of real thought using algebraic analysis with numerical simulation using PSpice is hardly even a concept in this book.
Bottom line: Go elsewhere