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[Quan Chi2]

Can any of you please recommend any good introductions to electrical engineering that I may read on my computer? Any books that will give me a good intro to EE that I can go out and buy?

I'm talking about books for beginners with no knowledge of the subject. I'm already reading the wikibook on EE and it's pretty understandable. However, it's short.

[Animate Dreams]

You should post a link to the wikibook, as well.

[Mine GO BOOM]

What college are you hoping to get into? Go to their website and find one of the EE courses they have, probably a 100 or 200 level, whatever would be required for your specific major. Find the syllabus and see what book they are using.

Bonus would be around September, if you could, audit one of the EE courses if a college is close to you. No EE course I ever took would take attendance, because they know if you don't show up, you will fail. If you are worried, just email the professor before hand saying you'd like to audit the course. 90% of the time, they'll say sure, just as long as you don't hand in homework/take the tests.

What level of math are you comfortable with? If you can to integrals and work with imaginary numbers, you can get a more advanced book. If not, you can do DC systems with caps/resisters without too much of a problem. Ohm's Law and close circuit analysis about the limit of what you'd learn before you hit problems with math.

[Blocks]

The internet will only take you so far in terms of well-gathered technical knowledge--sooner or later, you'll have to hit the literal books.

The true path to EE is through a standard college physics textbook. I recommend Physics for Scientists and Engineers by Serway and Jewett. It provides a good grounding in electromagnetism as well as relativity. Knowing first physical principles will give you an edge over the nubs who dive straight into the engineering. Make sure to get the right volume.

After that, the tome in electronics is The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill. Be warned, however, this book is not for the faint of heart.

[Mine GO BOOM]

Another thing. If you live in NYC, go to one of the many, many libraries there. Huge sections of books you can check out to learn everything you ever wanted, and it won't cost you a dime.

[Quan Chi2]

[Muskrat]

I suggest that you don't choose a major before you've been in college for a year. Take a few different classes in possible fields, such as EE and anything else you're interested in, then decide.

Really, though, they are right. I would start out learning math and physics because thats pretty much what an EE does and if you don't enjoy them, don't even start.

[Dr Brain]

[Blocks]

[Animate Dreams]

That's probably true in most cases, Blocks. But internet resources are getting better and better every year. I'm no programming guru, but I don't think anyone would contradict me when I say the internet is probably 100 times better for programming tutorials/books/resources than any books you might get. Although, I still love books. I don't have enough internets that I can just put some in my car, or anything like that, so I like to carry books around.

[SamHughes]

I would contradict you. The web is great for documentation, but for the learning-how-to-think and learning-how-to-program aspect, books still have the upper hand. Not for long, though: more and more books are popping up freely available on the web.

I wouldn't say the online information is terribly bad, though: the mere existence of PHP causes more damage to the learning of programming than all the broken C++ tutorials combined.

[Animate Dreams]

[SamHughes]

There is at least one good big O tutorial out there, I can promise you that, because I wrote it . I'm not going to tell you where it is.

[Muskrat]

Nothing can be compared to the give and take of in-class discussion, with peers and/or the professor. If a concept is not explained well enough by homework, readings, or lecture, it can be reformulated until you understand it.

Besides, the key to success in any field is to be able to explain, learn from, and expand upon concepts in a group setting. Really the specifics of any field is an afterthought once you have the ability to truly learn, analyze, reason, and interact with other who do the same.

I'm taking a Software Engineering class and a Database class. Almost all of Software Engineering involves working in a group and communicating. Database, on the other hand, has very little of that. If you don't see what I'm getting at, take a look at some info on the differences for pay and opportunity to advance between DBAs(cubicle hell) and Software Engineers.

And yes, the same most definitely applies to EEs. I'm not saying you shouldn't read books. In fact, reading is probably one of the most important parts of your education. The idea I think most people miss, though, is that when reading books as an undergraduate the best thing you get out of them is practice reading the kind of material you will be reading on the job or as a grad student. The actual knowledge contained is secondary to the ability to easily assimilate knowledge from complex technical manuals. This is especially pertinent in technology fields.

[Blocks]

[Quan Chi2]

[Mine GO BOOM]

Engineering is tons of group work. EE has lots of hands-on by working in a lab for a bunch of your classes. Be prepared to connects tons of little wires to tons of little chips, hooking up oscilloscopes, and just adjusting the hell out of it go get a fancy sinusoidal waveform to display. Every so often, you'll get to throw in LEDs or speakers, but rarely.

Can you get by without reading a lot? Yes, but you should know, reading should go hand-in-hand with other ways of learning, such as by doing, listening to lectures, doing homework, all those things that you thought were useless in high school. Well, when you get to college, the material is finally good, thus the need for a good study habit.

(Then again, I rarely bought the textbooks for most of my classes, even if you had to do homework out of them. EE was always one of the exceptions.)