Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components

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This book made me fall in love with electronics all over again . . . Part history book, part coffee-table book, and part journey into the inner lives of the electronics, [ Open Circuits] is a fascinating journey through the history of electronics." Big fan of Windell Oskay and his stuff. I wandered into Evil Mad Scientists Laboratories many years ago (in Sunnyvale, as I recall) and I believe I met him but it was a decade ago....

It takes 15 rotations of an adjustment screw to move a 15-turn trimmer potentiometer from one end of its resistive range to the other. Circuits that need to be adjusted with fine resolution control use this type of trimmer pot instead of the single-turn variety. What an awesome book! A rare breed of technical content that is appreciable by experts and novices alike." The components of the electrical circuit are: the generator (produces and maintains the electrical current, they can be batteries or alternators), the conductors (where the electrical current is transferred from one element to another), the receivers (transform the electrical energy into another type of energy), the control elements (the switches, for example) and the protection elements. This ended up on my radar while I was looking for nonfiction with a good combination of visuals and info. I don't actually know much about electronic components, so I was somewhat reluctant to take the plunge and get this, but then I spotted it on sale and snatched it up, and I'm glad I did.Eric Schlaepfer was trying to fix a broken piece of test equipment when he came across the cause of the problem—a troubled tantalum capacitor. The component had somehow shorted out, and he wanted to know why. So he polished it down for a look inside. He never found the source of the short, but he and his collaborator, Windell H. Oskay, discovered something even better: a breathtaking hidden world inside electronics. What followed were hours and hours of polishing, cleaning, and photography that resulted in Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components (No Starch Press, 2022), an excerpt of which follows. As the authors write, everything about these components is deliberately designed to meet specific technical needs, but that design leads to “accidental beauty: the emergent aesthetics of things you were never expected to see.” We can define electrical circuits as the connection that exists between two or more components that create a closed path or route through which electric current flows. Its fundamental purpose is to make the current perform its useful work, for example: to light a light bulb (luminous energy), to start an engine (mechanical energy) or a stove (thermal energy). If you found this list useful, do not forget to share it on your social networks. Remember that “Sharing is Caring”. This high-stability film resistor, about 4 millimeters in diameter, is made in much the same way as its inexpensive carbon-film cousin, but with exacting precision. A ceramic rod is coated with a fine layer of resistive film (thin metal, metal oxide, or carbon) and then a perfectly uniform helical groove is machined into the film.

As we have already mentioned we cannot see the Electrical circuits, but they are present in many elements and/or devices that depend on electricity to function. With these books of electrical circuits in PDF format you will have the opportunity to start the path of knowing extensively this subject that is studied in various careers and trades.Stunningly beautiful . . . While the component images stand alone as works of art, authors Schlaepfer and Oskay pair the pictures with clear and informative text that adds to the reader's knowledge of the circuitry they are looking at. This book is sure to be a staple in many makers, educators, and engineers libraries." The only downside to this book is the omission of mechanical keyboards, which is a missed opportunity for those (like me) who are interested in learning about the inner workings of these devices - specifically I would have loved to see a switch cross-section. There are a lot of explanations of inner mechanics of elements i used, but never fully understood the exact principles of their work.

A lovely book about electrical and electronic components that will delight those who have ever wondered what the insides of them look like. Lots of photographs showing the details of the components can be found in the book, along with descriptions of what they are made out of.Inductors are fundamental electronic components that store energy in the form of a magnetic field. They’re used, for example, in some types of power supplies to convert between voltages by alternately storing and releasing energy. This energy-efficient design helps maximize the battery life of cellphones and other portable electronics. This transformer has multiple sets of windings and is used in a power supply to create multiple output AC voltages from a single AC input such as a wall outlet. One of the standout features of this book is the quality of the photography, which showcases the beauty and inner workings of electronic components with incredible detail and clarity. While it will definitely be a ‘geek coffee table book’ for me, I would very much have appreciated it when I was 12 years old and first getting into electronics.”