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There's a sample chapter which is representative for the rest of the book: https://nostarch.com/download/OpenCircuits_Chapter1.pdf

They are high level descriptions accessible to a layman I'd say. Experts in the field probably won't gain much from the descriptions however.




As an expert in the field, I disagree.

I can tell you that a polystyrene capacitor will be super-linear, a C0G will be quite linear, stable, and fast, while an electrolytic will be slow, highly nonlinear, and polar, and how that impacts performance.

You get a lot of insight into how and why from seeing the actual construction. As an expert, for a lot of these devices, I never have seen that.

I know some capacitors have significant parasitic inductance or resistance, but it's this cut-away more clearly visualizes where it comes from. That's neat and helpful! From some of these, I could probably even estimate how much inductance.

Even things like switches, I've opened a fair number of out of curiosity, but it's interesting to see the ones I haven't, and even for the ones I have, you see something new.

I think the expertise means I get more out of it since I have more information to connect it to. I can see why some of the things I know about devices happen, and be better able to interpret the implications of some of the things I see. Seeing some connectors from the inside, I can describe failure modes which I couldn't do before; I just new something failed. Now I can see where corrosion can come in, versus mechanical failure.

I feel like the more you know, the more interesting this will be.




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