Learning the Electronics Art: A Hands-On Lab Course

A full-semester laboratory course in electronics, written as a student manual and not a book of photographs. It assumes no prior knowledge. Students build working circuits from the first sessions, including a radio receiver early on and an operational amplifier made from discrete transistors, before they move on to integrated parts. The analog material starts with voltage dividers, Ohm's law and filters, then covers bipolar transistors, op-amps, analog switches, oscillators and FM modulation. The digital material covers logic, programmable logic and microcontroller projects, with some exposure to the Verilog hardware description language. Each session pairs explanation and notes with an experiment and worked problems. The approach favours intuitive understanding of good circuit design over formula manipulation. It grew out of the Student Manual for The Art of Electronics and is the companion to the third edition of that textbook by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, cross-referencing it while remaining usable on its own. Thomas C. Hayes designed the course from more than two decades of teaching laboratory electronics at Harvard. Horowitz is credited as co-author. The cover quotes a recommendation from Wellesley College physics teachers who have used earlier editions of the manual for about 30 years.