Chapter 1: Components and Logic #

Two parts with the same schematic symbol can behave very differently. A transistor with plenty of gain at audio frequencies may have too little at the frequency you need, and a coil wound on the wrong core can quietly turn the signal it’s meant to pass into heat. The reasons lie in how each part is built.

Connect a part’s construction to its behavior, and you can predict how a diode, transistor, coil, or chip will act in a circuit and judge whether it suits the job. The same look inside shows how simple logic circuits make decisions and keep time. Every circuit ahead uses these parts.