Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery 2nd Edition

Book Preface

What’s New in the Second Edition

All of the text from the first edition of this book has been rewritten, and most of the photographs and schematics have been replaced.
Single-bus breadboards are now used throughout (as in Make: More Electronics) to reduce the risk of wiring errors. This change entailed rebuilding the circuits, but I believe it was worthwhile.
Diagrams showing component placement are now used instead of photographs of breadboarded circuits. I think the diagrams are clearer.
Internal views of breadboard connections have been redrawn to match the revisions noted above.
New photographs of tools and supplies have been included. For small items, I have used a ruled background to indicate the scale.
Where possible, I have substituted components that cost less. I have also reduced the range that you need to buy.
Three experiments have been completely revised:
The Nice Dice project that used LS-series 74xx chips in the first edition now uses 74HCxx chips, to be consistent with the rest of the book and with modern usage.
The project using a unijunction transistor has been replaced with an astable multivibrator circuit using two bipolar transistors.
The section on microcontrollers now recognizes that the Arduino has become the most popular choice in the Maker community.
In addition, two projects involving workshop fabrication using ABS plastic have been omitted, as many readers did not seem to find them useful.
All the page layouts have been changed to make them easily adaptable for handheld devices. The formatting is controlled by a plaintext markup language, so that future revisions will be simpler and quicker. We want the book to remain relevant and useful for many more years to come.
–Charles Platt, 2015

Everyone uses electronic devices, but most of us don’t really know what goes on inside them.
You may feel that you don’t need to know. You can drive a car without understanding the workings of an internal combustion engine, so why should you learn about electricity and electronics?
I think there are three reasons:
By learning how technology works, you become better able to control your world instead of being controlled by it. When you run into problems, you can solve them instead of feeling frustrated by them.
Learning about electronics can be fun, so long as you approach the process in the right way. It is also very affordable.
Knowledge of electronics can enhance your value as an employee, or perhaps even lead to a whole new career.