My undergrad ME major will have his first EE course next term and is already feeling intimidated. For whatever reason, he has shied away from all things electrical.
He is a good student, though. Can anyone recommend a good book he might look at over winter break that might provide him with some useful background? Not necessarily a textbook (although that would be okay, if there is one that you think is awesome). Not sure yet what the assigned text will be for his course.
Thanks in advance for the help with the confidence-building (and Xmas shopping) ; )!
Best strategy I can offer is to have him ask EE friend to help him along in the class as needed. And offer to return the favor when the EE friend has to take their own required thermo or fluids class.
Here are some course materials. The intro EE courses are EE16A and EE16B. These recently replaced EE20 and EE40. They may or may not resemble the courses at his school, but he may want to preview the material in them, since there is likely some overlap. http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/classes-eecs.html
He’d probably be fine if he just went in cold. If it’s his beginning course, they won’t expect any significant background. My son did that and he’s done fine in both of his EE classes thus far. Wish him luck.
Along those same lines, my son really enjoyed this, but it’s not an intro to EE book per se. It’s more about how computers work at their most fundamental level.
OP: yes, I would recommend that link. It has lots of good articles for intro into EE like intro to Electronic Engineering, Concepts in Electric Circuits, Control Engineering, etc. So by reading any of those articles, your son at will have some understanding of concepts and practical as well as theoritical knowledge of Electric Engineering. Therefore, your son will not be afraid and intimidated by EE.
Your son’s done an E&M Physics class, right? Those usually cover Kirchoff’s laws, and that’s all you really need to get started. Know those and you’ll be absolutely fine.
I’m a mech engineer, and I did not enjoy E&M (Electricity/Magnetism, which for us was Physics 2). I liked our “E sci” (electrical science) class because it seemed more practical. From what I heard, it was lots easier than the EE upper level classes.
When I was an MIT undergrad, non-EE majors (including ME majors) used this introduction to electronics class to satisfy the science distribution requirement.