Language of Equations...

[petemoore]

Where can I too learn to read and write equations [that work] for ckts?
  I see these equations and wonder what all the terms mean and how they relate.
  I keep reading these articles and pick a bit here and there, enought to get by but would like to be able to understand these equations...

[ExpAnonColin]

Mmm... I'm sure there are some decent calculus/algebra tutorial sort of pages on the net, do a search for them.

-Colin

[Boofhead]

The symbols used in electronics is pretty varied, you need to hunt down the meaning of symbol for the specific area of interest, eg. filters, transistors etc.

The best way to do this is to find a book or some good articles on the topic you are interested in and weed through the meaning on the symbols - take notes.  Some books have a table of symbols at the beginning and these are a good start, you will also find article on filters and transistors (for example) which define a lot of the symbols.  Other times you have to read the text and keep notes.  There's no easy way.

Keep in mind the symbols may vary from author to author, use of symbols isn't a standardized thing.  There's some common one's and knowing these this might help you work out some equations.  The root of the problem is the symbols aren't  fixed they are created by who ever writes down the equation and if that author doesn't *define the symbols* then the meaning of the symbols are lost, often making the equation unuseable or ambiguous.

[Transmogrifox]

A helpful book that I have used in my electronis classes is:

Microelectronic Circuits by Sedra/Smith
(can't remember the authors' first names, but that's enough info to find on Amazon or Barnes&Noble...)

This is an expensive and extensive book, so you really need to be serious about this thing and be willing to spend a lot of time to get anything out of it.

I have been thinking of putting together a compact tutorial that is adequate for stompbox topics, but doesn't require much calculus background.  Most of what I do with stompboxes is simple algebra.  If you have algebra down, you're in good shape because we wave our hands at differential Calculus with the Laplace Transform, which reduces to algebra.  Since the Laplace transform can be easily used to represent the frequency domain, there is no need to know how to take the inverse, therefore you only need to do algebra to do most stompboxes.

[Transmogrifox]

Oh yeah... if you have specific equations that you are thinking of, email me ( transmogrifox@yahoo.com) and I will try to explain them as well as I can...and through a "back and forth" discussion, many related topics will come up and over time you will begin to get a feel for this stuff.