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Circuits

Description Book Information

About the Book

“Great textbooks challenge the student to turn understanding into tools to solve practical problems and convey a comprehensive vision of a technical area inspiring the student to master large parts of it and even to extend the field,” so wrote Frederic Meeker in the article entitled “More Treasured Texts,” published in the June 2003 issue of Spectrum.

Despite the numerous textbooks available on circuit analysis and what seems to be common agreement over content and organization after almost fifty years of the same teaching model, many students still find the content difficult and come away with only a hazy idea about electrical engineering practice. Worse, after taking a beginning circuit class many decide that electrical engineering is not for them.

This new work conveys a set of timeless principles and problem-solving techniques, but also a framework for subsequent studies marked by the same clarity and crisp explanations that characterize the senior author’s Electromagnetics textbooks, which have been adopted by over 100 universities in the United States and by a comparable number of international universities. The focused presentation treats the subject in considerably fewer pages than comparable works on the subject. Complete coverage of circuit topics enough for a two-semester course is presented in fewer than 672 pages.

As circuit theory is traditionally the entry course into electrical and computer engineering, a wide-ranging and inspiring vision of the profession is given. This is done through the use of Technology Briefs, each 2 to 5 pages in length, highlighting specific technologies from memory chips and flash drives to superconductivity and RFID circuits.

The text introduces Multisim, a user-friendly Spice based software simulator with a superior human/computer interface. Multisim is used not as an end in itself, but as a means to help students gain practical insight in the relationship between the mathematics, the circuits, and the real world. Unlike free education evaluation versions of Spice packaged with similar texts that allow 20 or fewer active devices and 50 nodes in a circuit, the Ulaby/Maharbiz text comes with a CD-ROM, which includes a full and complete version of the Multisim software, as well as many circuit examples on how to apply it.

An effective, eye-catching four-color style layout with clear typography, large imagery, and diagrams with just the right amount of color, highlighting key terms and amplifying illustrations, make the book visually appealing. An excellent array of visualization aids and the constant reference to presently available technological examples motivate readers to tackle circuit theory more enthusiastically. The CD contents include solutions to the exercises within each chapter as well as step-by-step examples and additional exercises with solutions. A tutorial consisting of 43 Demos which are a mixture of problems, solutions, investigations and experiments with Multisim is also included. The Demos are divided into ten chapters (2 through 11) to correspond to the chapters in the book. In addition, five “Emphasis Demos” are provided which focus less on working with Multisim and more about a specific circuit theory concept through the use of simulation.


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Authors and Organization:

Fawwaz Ulaby, University of Michigan

Michel Maharbiz, University of California, Berkeley

Publisher: NTS Press
Edition: 1
ISBN-10: 1-934891-00-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-934891-00-1

Summary of How NI Technology is Used: Circuits is a new introductory circuits textbook that combines exciting and relevat examples with traditional circuit theory.  Multisim software, bundled with the text, provides students an industry standard tool for designing, simualting, and experiencing circuits concepts.

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Anita B
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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