Building Intuition

I've been working my way through the Art of Electronics. When I say "working" I do mean working. It's a dense book and I can do a few pages at a time before I need to take a break.Right now I'm sitting at bipolar junction transistors (BJT) and it's so far from obvious how they work when they're in the linear region. I can wire up a BJT switch as well as the next guy, but once you start to look at the bias networks and how to do the calculations to get the little buggers to do what you want it makes your head spin.I tried to take a stab at wiring something up before I really grokked things.Nope. All of the nope.But it's through failure that you start to learn.It's through leading that you start to build an intuition about how all this works.Sure, intuition isn't as good when it comes to the specifics of exactly how something works. Intuition doesn't immediately help with dealing with Early voltage and resistance. But it gets you in the ballpark.Right now I still need a map to get to the ballpark.But at least I kind-of-sort-of know the direction that it's in.

Previous
Previous

Experimentation

Next
Next

More of the same