Electrical Engineering

[AndRewPearson]

I am a high school senior and have been accepted into several colleges's engineering programs. I hope to pursue electrical engineering. I was wondering if anyone here knew of any good books or textbooks I could read over the summer to familiarize myself with the material or get a head start. Thank you.

 

[chorb]

Im in EE/CE (close to graduating) and there is no real 1 subject that EE deals with in particular. However, where I go to school the first major classes I took mostly involved programming (Java, C, python, fortran, etc) and later on got to the physical aspects such as transistors and integrated circuits. If you arent familiar with programming already I would suggest just learning about the general flow of how it works (if statements, for loops, while loops, and so on).

Also, speaking from experience, I would strongly suggest to go over your precalc and your trig functions and know them by heart as your first 2 years you will be neck deep in them with physics.

Sorry I can't reccomend 1 book that would teach you all this, but hopefully this will give you enough information to try to mix and match.

For what its worth, dont worry too much; if you've made it this far, you will be fine.

 

[rocadelpunk]

pick up a calculus book
pick up a physics book
pick up an intro to circuits


should keep you busy.


and if possible, you'd be better off taking a chemistry, physics, calculus course that you are ready for at local community college and then transferring credit over.

Will,

a.) put you at right level
b.) put you slightly ahead
c.) put you slighty ahead and if you choose so gives you the option to take it easy first quarter/semester which I HIGHLY recommend.

Local college might also offer a drafting course/intro to engineering thing which you'll most likely have to take (basic programming in like mathematica/matlab/maple/cad..etc)


edit: have fun : P, I got out of EE this year (junior) going to pure math.

 

[rambow]

whoa whoa whoa. Not to hijack the thread or anything, but what if you (I) didn't (won't be) taking calculus in high school?

 

[IEC]

Definitely study up and take it easy the first semester. I went into college thinking it couldn't be that hard. My GPA showed otherwise

 

[chorb]

Originally posted by: rambow
whoa whoa whoa. Not to hijack the thread or anything, but what if you (I) didn't (won't be) taking calculus in high school?

As I said, study your precalc and know your trig identities (sin, cos, tan). Calculus is a whole new level of math that doesnt really rely on any conventional math you have learned, obviously you need to have basic math skills, but as you will find out, it is just a completely new concept.

 

[AndRewPearson]

Would it be better to go over just pre - calculus and trigonometry or to go over real calculus? I took A.P. B.C. Calculus this year, so should I just go over Calculus? If so, what kind of Calculus? Is there any specific concentration? Thank you.

 

[Loki726]

Originally posted by: AndRewPearson
Would it be better to go over just pre - calculus and trigonometry or to go over real calculus? I took A.P. B.C. Calculus this year, so should I just go over Calculus? If so, what kind of Calculus? Is there any specific concentration? Thank you.

You need to be familiar with real calculus if you are going to a real university. One of the most important parts of being an EE, or any kind of engineer, is developing models that describe the physical world. Once you have a model, you can make predictions about how something would behave in the real world without actually building and observing it. To develop, or even to learn, a model that involves rates of change, you need calculus.

The progression of learning calculus in most engineering universities is structured like this:

--------------------------------------------
Calculus I: Introduction to limits, derivatives, integrals, techniques for finding minimum/maximum, optimizations, etc.

Calculus II: Taylor Polynomials, Inifinite Series, Convergence tests, L'hopitals Rule, Integration by partial fractions, Integration by Trignometric Identities.

Linear Algebra: Matrix Operations, Guassian Elimination, Eigen Value tests.

CalculusIII: Integrals and Derviatives in Multiple Dimensions, Guass's Law, Line Integrals, Surface Integrals, Gradients, Optimization in multidimension.

Differential Equations: Seperation of Variables, Integrating Factors, Approximation Methods,First Second and Third Order Differential Equations, Using Eigen Vectors to solve systems of differential equations.

--------------------------------------------------


Most real engineering courses will not be available until after you have completed all of these.

My advice would be to forget about jumping into real EE material for now and concentrate on getting through your prerequisite classes. It will take you about 40 hours (about a year to a year and a half) before you are able to learn any substantial amount of EE material.

Between now and then you can decide what kind of EE you want to focus on. EE can be divided into the following categories.

---------------

Computer Engineering

Digital Signal Processing

Electrical Power

Electromagnetics

Electronic Device Design

Microsystems

Optics and Photonics

Systems and Controls

Telecommunications

--------------------------------------------------

Electrical Power, Electromagnetics, and Systems and Controls are the traditional EE fields. They deal mainly with the classical physics view of Electricity and Magnetism.
-If you are interested in this field, pay attention in your multidimensional calc class and
take a lot of E&M physics courses.


Computer Engineering deals with computer archetitecture and digital logic.
- If you are interested in this field, take an intro to digital logic course and make sure
you know at least the basics of programming.

Electronic Device Design and Microsystems deal with the actual devices (transistors) that are used in modern digital and analog systems. Microsystems describes digital logic at the transistor level. Electronic Device Design is concerned with using transistors to design filters, amplifiers, current sources, diodes, etc...
-If you are inetersted in either of these fields, you need a strong background in solid
state physics.

Digital Signal Processing is concerned with sampling analog signals, processing them with digital systems, and creating new analog signals.
-Because this field deals with signal conversions between the time and frequency domain
you need to be familiar with the Fourier and Z Transforms as well as be comfortable
working with the complex exponential representation of periodic functions.

I am not familiar with the exact details of the other areas but you can probably find information on them with a simple google search if you are interested.

 

[BrownTown]

well, personally I'm not a huge fan of spending summers doing school work. Its good to have some time off to do something else, you'll probably help yourself alot more by getting a summer job than reading some textbooks. But if you want to try to get ahead then just figure out what classes you will take next year and study them. Personally as an EE student I have never used a trig identity. Most likely your first year wont even have any EE classes, certinaly not the first semseter. So, learn chemisty, physics, calculus, computer programming etc... If you have AP credit in all these courese than you will actually want to start learning the actual EE stuff. Just get an intro circuits book and read. Really you don't need any calculus knowledge to do circuits, maybe just to describe capacitors and inductors, but thats more on concept than practice. As an engineer you shouldn't really be forced to do lots of math of any kind (algebra or calculus) on paper. You should always have a calculator and a computer with mathmatical software to do all the calculations for you. Engineering isnt about working hard, its about using the tools you have (like computers and calculators) to solve problems with as little work as possible. Understanding the concepts behind things is always better than knowing how to do the math.

As an example: in EE you will often write node equations for circuits that involve solving several simultanous equations. It is much much more important to know how to write the equations than to know how to solve them. In real life (as in any good college) they will not be concerned about how fast you can solve simlutanious equations, they just wnat you to be able to write them, then type them into a calculator or computer and let it solve them.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Go to Radio Shack and get one of those 300-in-one project kits, and build them - all. Real-life experience with electronics has no substitute. You won't get into the actual electronic fundamentals until later, as everyone has noted, but when you do, it makes SO much more sense if you know the real-world applications. I've built random circuits for most of my life, and when it comes to paying attention in class and understanding the material, I think I'm way ahead because I'm looking to what this particular concept can be applied to. That really helps you learn (at least, it helps me.) (I'm in my third year of EE; one to go!)

 

[A5]

You won't be doing any real EE until your 2nd year - the whole first year will be spent taking pre-reqs and core classes (like the various levels of calc, intro chemistry, intro physics, english, etc.). Don't waste your summer studying for school - it won't do you any good.

 

[CycloWizard]

The more you understand math, the better off you'll be. I didn't have a very good math background going in to my freshman year, so I struggled a bit. If you understand the math, then the rest of any engineering field is pretty straightforward. If it's not math, chances are it's memorization.

 

[Bowsky]

I'm a freshman EE student and from what I've seen so far it is all about the math. The only engineering classes I have taken have been very general and cover topics like drafting and computer usage (AutoCAD, VB.Net, and others). Even though you can practice these things, it won't be worth the effort as introductory engineering courses are often very easy and general.

Depending on what you get on the AP Calculus B.C. Exam, you'll have the chance to jump pretty far ahead in math. I scored well on the B.C. Exam and was able to take Calculus 3 this past Fall. I am currently enrolled in Differential Equations (only one more to go ). If you are able to do this consider yourself well off. At my college Calculus 2 is the real killer since it still requires students to set up AND solve some pretty complicated problems. Things better with Calculus 3 because it only requires knowledge of the problem with minimal work.

As far as learning things in advance, I do not recommend it. First it's not worth the effort. It'll take a lot more time reading the textbook trying to understand something than just listening to the professor teach it in class. Also, because of the pace of classes, along with their unpredictability, you probably will not be able to get too much of a head start.

 

[Lord Banshee]

MATH MATH MATH!!!!

i am a junior in EE right now my hardest class (Discrete Time Signals) is so hard due to the math (or the professor lol) but i can not stress enough, know you calc.

By far my best/fav class this semester is Digital Logic, i like it so much i am sacrificeing my summer to take micro processor application (which is like an extension to Digital Logic, but using small cpus i suppose)

 

[BrownTown]

lol, digital logic is soooo much better than discrete time signals thats its not even funny. Digital logic is actually kinda fun, and you getta see how you wire a bunch on NAND gates together and make a simple ALU (for the class i was in we ended up designing a 4bit ALU to impliment the simple instructions like add, subtrace, bitwise logical operators, branch not equal etc...). Basically all the stuff to make a crappy CPU with a ISA of about 8 instructions. Of coruse in signals processing class its all a bunch of crazy looking complex exponentials that are supposed to be the EASY way to do the math. Funny how in high school you tihnk people make complex numbers up just to confuse you becasue they make no sense, then you become an EE and you use complex numbers everywhere, and are now 100% sure they were made just to complicate your life

 

[Lord Banshee]

yep digtal logic is fun , i just finished a 2x 4-bit ALU that does all those things you stated lol, we have two more labs left hmmm wonder how much better it will get.

 

[Loki726]

If you guys are interested in digital logic, you should consider learning a Hardware Design Language like VHDL or Verilog.

Once you get through the basics of a language, you will be able to make a model of any digital device that you want. Once you have that, you can run a simulation to see exactly how the real device would function. (Try this simulator http://www.xilinx.com/ise/mxe3/mxe_3_6.0d.zip )

You can even use a hardware design language description to synthesize a real device on a programmable logic device (like a FPGA or CLPD). Both Altera and Xilinx (www.altera.com and www.xilinx.com) sell FPGA development boards for less than $100. They are great places to start if you want to experiment with creating your own devices.

 

[BrownTown]

yeah, actually I already have that on my computer, but I don't think i really used it much. Just too the basic digital logic so far, so nothing too fancy needing heavy duty simulaton.

 

[Lord Banshee]

We Quartus II for my Digital logic class, looking at the program you provided loki, it is quite different and seeing that i know nothing about VHDL i might not be able to do much with it. But i believe next month we are actaully going to get to gointo VHDL in my Digital Logic class.

So i am not sure what you guys have/had at your colleges but for Digital Circuit Design we have 3 undergrad classes, Digital Logic, Microprocessor Applications, and Digital Design. These classes will/should teach me out to implement IC/CPUs that are out there, but what kind of classes involve in building Microprocessors. For example if i get a internship at Intel/AMD/IBM/NVidia/ATi, what course other than the ones listes above what would help me more for example working with a the CPU/GPU design team? I believe PM told me once if i can understand CMOS VLSI design i would be set, but what kind of classes teach me that, i ordered a book PM suggested, Principles of CMOS VLSI Design, but it deals alot with transistor and i have not had a class on transistors at all so most of the book is a little confusing. I looked up that book at my college website, Univeristy of Florida, and a Graduate coarse in EE actaully uses this book and i fear that i will be short sited for what i really want to do with my EE degree if i don't get my masters or something.
Yeah that was long story there (sorry about that) but can you guys help out?


Thanks,
Chris