Common Problems When Learning Electronics? Ideal Solutions?

[kingwill829]

Hey guys,

I'm an electronics enthusiast, and I'm thinking of starting an electronics blog where I can share content that people learning about electronics will find useful. I find that a lot of the educational electronics resources I come across offer good tutorials, but don't go into enough detail into how and why something works the way it does. I'm hoping people can share some of the other common problems they encountered when learning electronics and the sort of 'learning resources / online content' they wish had been available to them at the time.

It would be great if this starts a lively discussion with people sharing common problems and ideal solutions, as well as their favourite online tools and resources, and everyone involved being able to discover something new of use.

[IanB]

IMHO, the most common problem with people learning by themselves is the tendency to skip over the hard stuff, or to "cheat" the learning process.

For instance, in a formal learning environment there are assignments and homework to do, and drills on the fundamentals. The student is not allowed to progress until the earlier stages of formation are complete.

However, in a self-learning environment there is nobody to make you do the exercises. It is very easy to say, "oh, I understand that" and move on without actually doing the hard work. This leads to misunderstandings and misconceptions, which cause more advanced topics to seem more confusing than they actually should be.

So I don't think the problem is with content as such. There is already any amount of good content available in books and online. The problem is with human nature and the desire to skip ahead...

[magetoo]

So I don't think the problem is with content as such. [...] The problem is with human nature and the desire to skip ahead...

All we need to do is to fix human nature and we'll be fine!

On a more serious note, I don't think that structuring online information for people who read out of interest just like a traditional electronics course is the right thing to do.  If you want that, why not just grab a textbook?

For online, maybe one could try to just link to earlier "chapters" describing the fundamental concepts as they come up later, but I suspect that's going to be hard to get right without just making an unreadable mess.  On the other hand, writing in the "do A, then B, followed by C" style is easier, and I guess that's why there is more of that.

There are a lot of good resources online, though - it's just harder to find than the "how to blink an RGB LED with Arduino" stuff.  Maybe all that is needed is curation?

[Blofeld]

...It would be great if this starts a lively discussion with people sharing common problems and ideal solutions, as well as their favourite online tools and resources..

As a good introdution for the absolute beginner, http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/ is hard to beat.

And as IanB has mentioned, moving on without really understanding what has been covered is a big problem for people learning by themselves. Trying to anwer the questions from these worksheets should help: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/worksheets/index.html

[dom0]

I think a huge problem is that many people are scared by complex numbers and avoid them completely, thus avoiding and never understanding complex AC analysis... which in turn is pretty much the key to really understanding how linear systems, filters, amplifiers and so on work, why they are doing what they are doing, why they are stable or oscillating and so on.

And honestly, I avoided that part of "EE", too, until I had to do it for my studies. But now I can only recommend to study that part, because it is really like an enlightenment. And not as complicated as one thinks, in fact, complex analysis makes everything much simpler compared to solving systems of differential equations, which are ... much harder.