Book Description

This exciting new text teaches the foundations of electric circuits and develops a thinking style and a problem-solving methodology that is based on physical insight. Designed for the first course or sequence in circuits in electrical engineering, the approach imparts not only an appreciation for the elegance of the mathematics of circuit theory, but a genuine "feel" for a circuit's physical operation. This will benefit students not only in the rest of the curriculum, but in being able to cope with the rapidly changing technology they will face on-the-job. The text covers all the traditional topics in a way that holds students' interest. The presentation is only as mathematically rigorous as is needed, and theory is always related to real-life situations. Franco introduces ideal transformers and amplifiers early on to stimulate student interest by giving a taste of actual engineering practice. This is followed by extensive coverage of the operational amplifier to provide a practical illustration of abstract but fundamental concepts such as impedance transformation and root location control--always with a vigilant eye on the underlying physical basis. SPICE is referred to throughout the text as a means for checking the results of hand calculations, and in separate end-of-chapter sections, which introduce the most important SPICE features at the specific points in the presentation at which students will find them most useful. Over 350 worked examples, 400-plus exercises, and 1000 end-of-chapter problems help students develop an engineering approach to problem solving based on conceptual understanding and physical intuition rather than on rote procedures.