MOTM

Non-technical explanations (others are welcome to correct inaccuracies in my
brevity):

A Resistor restricts (resists) the flow of electricity. Plumbing analogies
only work so well, since electricity always flows at light-speed and water
doesn't, but in plumbing, a resistor would be equivalent to a short section
of smaller-diameter pipe being placed in the line. The higher the resistance
value, the smaller the diameter of the pipe, and the harder it is for
current to flow through.

Resistance is measure in Ohms. The colored bands are the way you read them.
You can find those tables anywhere, even in Radio Shack catalogs, so I won't
stick one in here, but in a nutshell: Each color represents a number
(black=0, brown=1, etc.). A standard resistor has three bands. The first two
are the first two digits of the value, and the third is the number of zeros
that follow it. Higher tolerance (i.e., more accurate) resistors are often a
different background color than the standard brown/beige (a lot varies by
manufacturer), for instance, blue, and there is a forth band that is either
silver or gold to indicate 5% or 1% accuracy.

A Capacitor stores electricity. The current entering on one side is "held"
until it "can't stands it no more," at which point the capacitor
'discharges' and allows the current to flow. Once in a discharged state, it
then goes back to charging up again. The amount of current that it will
store before discharging determines its value, measured in Farads (usually
in micro or nano farads, since a farad is a big amount). Very large
capacitors are sometimes called by the old name "condensers" and batteries
are very much related to the capacitor concept, which is why their schematic
symbol looks similar.

The charging and discharging of a capacitor is useful in making oscillators.


There are many different kinds of capacitor, way too many to go into in an
email.

I can't personally recommend a good book. I learned what I know of
electronics by building Paia kits and then having an engineer friend fix
them for me. I would sit there as he worked and scolded me and from that I
learned a lot. Now I'm learning from other MOTM-ers and from Paul's
schematics and circuit descriptions.



 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Jeffrey Pontius [mailto:jpont@...] 
Sent:	Wednesday, 06 September, 2000 7:51 PM
To:	motm@egroups.com
Subject:	[motm] Basic electronics book

Since I'm very new to this diy synth stuff, I'm asking for recommendations
on a basic electronics book (i.e., what do the colors on this
cylindrical thing mean?, what does a capacitor do? what is a 47k
resistor?).

Also, a basic electronics book that is analogue synth oriented (I've seen
a book by Barry Klein mentioned, but can't locate a copy).

Thanks (a new adventurer?), Jeff