Book covering basic physics/electronics relevant to computer science?
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After programming for a number of years without coming from a comp sci background. I've recently been spending some time reading some more theoretical books about how processors work, how networks/data communications work etc. So currently I'm learning from top down and it's going OK. I feel though that as I didn't take physics at school beyond age 13 there are some fundamental foundations that I still don't have a handle on, that would help me understand the whole picture. Particularly the absolute basics of electronics. What electricity is, What voltage is, how logic gates are physically implemented in a way a layman can understand. Also I'm flaky on things like the physics of sound waves and how it relates to various audio formats. Has anyone come across any good book that explains basic physics for computer science from the ground up?
Boylstad. Search for it. Its not an easy read. Thats about as dumded down as you can get and still be able to apply the physics behind the reality. Electircal theory has to come first, then you can build the fundamentals of gate theory on top of that. Without the electrical theory down pat though, gate theory is NOT going to make any sense. I was weaned on Boylstad and came out with an understanding that I haven't seen in many other people, including masters and doctorates.
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After programming for a number of years without coming from a comp sci background. I've recently been spending some time reading some more theoretical books about how processors work, how networks/data communications work etc. So currently I'm learning from top down and it's going OK. I feel though that as I didn't take physics at school beyond age 13 there are some fundamental foundations that I still don't have a handle on, that would help me understand the whole picture. Particularly the absolute basics of electronics. What electricity is, What voltage is, how logic gates are physically implemented in a way a layman can understand. Also I'm flaky on things like the physics of sound waves and how it relates to various audio formats. Has anyone come across any good book that explains basic physics for computer science from the ground up?
I'm a EE with an MS in Comp Sci who works as an embedded programmer. Honestly after the first year of college practically nobody except research scientists and chip developers give a rat's ass about the physics of electronics. Well, maybe that is not totally true but close. If your purpose though is to learn some practical electronics that can help you be a better programmer, I would get one of those science kits that you can get at Radio Shack that lets you breadboard a bunch of circuits. They usually come with an experiment book and all the components including resistors, capacitors, leds, potentiometers, timer/counters, and op-amps, transistors, and logic gates and will give you a good start on the basics. I bought one for my teenage son and he loved it. The one I bought had a built in power supply, voltmeter and current meter. Unless you want to interface complex external devices to a computer yourself that is probably all you need. Once you feel good about that I'd be looking for really good computer architecture book. Here you can learn about machine language design and how it relates to the hardware, memory layouts, bus architecture, chips selects and chip select logic, keyboard scanning, and the like. That will get you to the point where you can read a computer processor manual or just about any chip manual and understand it. After that I'd be thinking about buying a single board computer. There are a bunch of them available in $100-$200 range that have some built in I/O and prototype areas. They let you program on a PC and download to the SBC via RS232. Stick with an 8051 based board, it will be simple to learn and lots of free tools are available, plus it is a pretty widely used chip still. I'd stay away from the stamp processors at first, they are a more specialized type of processor. Now you can play around with some assembly (or even C code) and wiggle some lights or read some switches. That will marry up the electronics with the programming and put you well on the way to be a robotics programmer.
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After programming for a number of years without coming from a comp sci background. I've recently been spending some time reading some more theoretical books about how processors work, how networks/data communications work etc. So currently I'm learning from top down and it's going OK. I feel though that as I didn't take physics at school beyond age 13 there are some fundamental foundations that I still don't have a handle on, that would help me understand the whole picture. Particularly the absolute basics of electronics. What electricity is, What voltage is, how logic gates are physically implemented in a way a layman can understand. Also I'm flaky on things like the physics of sound waves and how it relates to various audio formats. Has anyone come across any good book that explains basic physics for computer science from the ground up?
A really good basic overview without getting too complex would be the Radio Shack series on electronics by Forest M.Mimms III - they're really basic, with lots of illustrations, but they give you a good grounding of how electricity, basic components, and logic gates work.
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After programming for a number of years without coming from a comp sci background. I've recently been spending some time reading some more theoretical books about how processors work, how networks/data communications work etc. So currently I'm learning from top down and it's going OK. I feel though that as I didn't take physics at school beyond age 13 there are some fundamental foundations that I still don't have a handle on, that would help me understand the whole picture. Particularly the absolute basics of electronics. What electricity is, What voltage is, how logic gates are physically implemented in a way a layman can understand. Also I'm flaky on things like the physics of sound waves and how it relates to various audio formats. Has anyone come across any good book that explains basic physics for computer science from the ground up?
:thumbsup:I would also highly recommend the Feynman Lectures, easy and comprehensive for both electronics and physics. Charles Pikell
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MartinSmith wrote:
Particularly the absolute basics of electronics. What electricity is, What voltage is, how logic gates are physically implemented in a way a layman can understand.
Unfortunately transistors work based on quantum mechanical principles. According to Classical Physics they won't work. The closest you're going to get in laymans terms is "When voltage is applied to the control lead MAGIC HAPPENS and it connects the input and output leads. When the voltage is removed from the control the connection is broken." At the level of how logic gates are built up from transistors (as switches) any decent computer architecture book should cover this.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
dan neely wrote:
Unfortunately transistors work based on quantum mechanical principles. According to Classical Physics they won't work. The closest you're going to get in laymans terms is "When voltage is applied to the control lead MAGIC HAPPENS and it connects the input and output leads. When the voltage is removed from the control the connection is broken."
Modern 45 nm transistors may have quantum mechanical principles, but I think regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation. 1. Pure silicon does not conduct because there are no floating electrons. 2. By "doping" silicon with impurities to the left or right on the periodic table, you create atoms in the lattice structure with extra free electrons or missing electrons (known as holes). 3. Look up the operation of a P-N junction. It's something about how current can only flow from the positively doped silicon to the negatively doped silicon because there are no excess electrons in the P-type silicon to start current flow the other way. If you make the junction too small or raise the voltage too high, you get quantum tunneling of electrons across the P-type silicon, but that's not an issue with transistors that you can see. 4. MOSFETs are fun. That stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor, which explains their function. They have an N-P-N arrangement of silicon with a layer of oxide covering the trio and then a layer of metal above that. If you try to pass current across through the N-P-N silicon, the N-P reverse diode junction blocks it. But if you apply a positive voltage to the metal at the top, the whole thing acts as a capacitor, pulling a layer of electrons out of the P-type silicon to create a temporary N-type channel right up against the oxide layer. This allows current to flow across because now you have some N-N-N above the N-P-N. Martin, I highly commend you for your curiosity and desire to learn the basics of physics and how they power our computers. The knowledge itself is not necessary to be a coder, but that inquisitive mentality is what makes someone an excellent problem solver. Sort of changing the subject, but still on the topic of physics basics, how do people feel about the current level of knowledge about conservation of energy, flows of heat, etc.? How many people realize that energy saving light bulbs don't help in places that are simultaneously running electric heaters? Or, why is running air conditioner in reverse bet
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dan neely wrote:
Unfortunately transistors work based on quantum mechanical principles. According to Classical Physics they won't work. The closest you're going to get in laymans terms is "When voltage is applied to the control lead MAGIC HAPPENS and it connects the input and output leads. When the voltage is removed from the control the connection is broken."
Modern 45 nm transistors may have quantum mechanical principles, but I think regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation. 1. Pure silicon does not conduct because there are no floating electrons. 2. By "doping" silicon with impurities to the left or right on the periodic table, you create atoms in the lattice structure with extra free electrons or missing electrons (known as holes). 3. Look up the operation of a P-N junction. It's something about how current can only flow from the positively doped silicon to the negatively doped silicon because there are no excess electrons in the P-type silicon to start current flow the other way. If you make the junction too small or raise the voltage too high, you get quantum tunneling of electrons across the P-type silicon, but that's not an issue with transistors that you can see. 4. MOSFETs are fun. That stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor, which explains their function. They have an N-P-N arrangement of silicon with a layer of oxide covering the trio and then a layer of metal above that. If you try to pass current across through the N-P-N silicon, the N-P reverse diode junction blocks it. But if you apply a positive voltage to the metal at the top, the whole thing acts as a capacitor, pulling a layer of electrons out of the P-type silicon to create a temporary N-type channel right up against the oxide layer. This allows current to flow across because now you have some N-N-N above the N-P-N. Martin, I highly commend you for your curiosity and desire to learn the basics of physics and how they power our computers. The knowledge itself is not necessary to be a coder, but that inquisitive mentality is what makes someone an excellent problem solver. Sort of changing the subject, but still on the topic of physics basics, how do people feel about the current level of knowledge about conservation of energy, flows of heat, etc.? How many people realize that energy saving light bulbs don't help in places that are simultaneously running electric heaters? Or, why is running air conditioner in reverse bet
Very interesting, especially the parts about applying physics to daily activities. You should write some articles on this! If you did, I'd be interested in reading them.
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dan neely wrote:
Unfortunately transistors work based on quantum mechanical principles. According to Classical Physics they won't work. The closest you're going to get in laymans terms is "When voltage is applied to the control lead MAGIC HAPPENS and it connects the input and output leads. When the voltage is removed from the control the connection is broken."
Modern 45 nm transistors may have quantum mechanical principles, but I think regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation. 1. Pure silicon does not conduct because there are no floating electrons. 2. By "doping" silicon with impurities to the left or right on the periodic table, you create atoms in the lattice structure with extra free electrons or missing electrons (known as holes). 3. Look up the operation of a P-N junction. It's something about how current can only flow from the positively doped silicon to the negatively doped silicon because there are no excess electrons in the P-type silicon to start current flow the other way. If you make the junction too small or raise the voltage too high, you get quantum tunneling of electrons across the P-type silicon, but that's not an issue with transistors that you can see. 4. MOSFETs are fun. That stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor, which explains their function. They have an N-P-N arrangement of silicon with a layer of oxide covering the trio and then a layer of metal above that. If you try to pass current across through the N-P-N silicon, the N-P reverse diode junction blocks it. But if you apply a positive voltage to the metal at the top, the whole thing acts as a capacitor, pulling a layer of electrons out of the P-type silicon to create a temporary N-type channel right up against the oxide layer. This allows current to flow across because now you have some N-N-N above the N-P-N. Martin, I highly commend you for your curiosity and desire to learn the basics of physics and how they power our computers. The knowledge itself is not necessary to be a coder, but that inquisitive mentality is what makes someone an excellent problem solver. Sort of changing the subject, but still on the topic of physics basics, how do people feel about the current level of knowledge about conservation of energy, flows of heat, etc.? How many people realize that energy saving light bulbs don't help in places that are simultaneously running electric heaters? Or, why is running air conditioner in reverse bet
Charvak Karpe wrote:
regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation
While "regular" transistors are not flirting with the theoretical limits to their miniaturization, as you clearly essentially know to even talk about "lattice" or "free electrons", these concepts are intrinsically quantum mechanical, an NPN transistor isn't analogous to say a triode.
Charvak Karpe wrote:
empty bottle of syrup turned upside down
For an exciting video try the google query (( PITCH DROP EXPERIMENT )).
pg--az
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dan neely wrote:
Unfortunately transistors work based on quantum mechanical principles. According to Classical Physics they won't work. The closest you're going to get in laymans terms is "When voltage is applied to the control lead MAGIC HAPPENS and it connects the input and output leads. When the voltage is removed from the control the connection is broken."
Modern 45 nm transistors may have quantum mechanical principles, but I think regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation. 1. Pure silicon does not conduct because there are no floating electrons. 2. By "doping" silicon with impurities to the left or right on the periodic table, you create atoms in the lattice structure with extra free electrons or missing electrons (known as holes). 3. Look up the operation of a P-N junction. It's something about how current can only flow from the positively doped silicon to the negatively doped silicon because there are no excess electrons in the P-type silicon to start current flow the other way. If you make the junction too small or raise the voltage too high, you get quantum tunneling of electrons across the P-type silicon, but that's not an issue with transistors that you can see. 4. MOSFETs are fun. That stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor, which explains their function. They have an N-P-N arrangement of silicon with a layer of oxide covering the trio and then a layer of metal above that. If you try to pass current across through the N-P-N silicon, the N-P reverse diode junction blocks it. But if you apply a positive voltage to the metal at the top, the whole thing acts as a capacitor, pulling a layer of electrons out of the P-type silicon to create a temporary N-type channel right up against the oxide layer. This allows current to flow across because now you have some N-N-N above the N-P-N. Martin, I highly commend you for your curiosity and desire to learn the basics of physics and how they power our computers. The knowledge itself is not necessary to be a coder, but that inquisitive mentality is what makes someone an excellent problem solver. Sort of changing the subject, but still on the topic of physics basics, how do people feel about the current level of knowledge about conservation of energy, flows of heat, etc.? How many people realize that energy saving light bulbs don't help in places that are simultaneously running electric heaters? Or, why is running air conditioner in reverse bet
Charvak Karpe wrote:
Modern 45 nm transistors may have quantum mechanical principles, but I think regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation.
Nope. The end effects look classical but the components they function on (eg holes) of all come from quantum effects. The continued shrinking of processes is adding quantum effects at at different level, such that the pseudo classical explanations that you get from crunching the quantum equations on larger transistors no longer apply.
This idea that particles could only contain lumps of energy in certain sizes
moved into other areas of physics as well. Over the next decade, Niels Bohr pulled
it into his description of how an atom worked. He said that electrons traveling
around a nucleus couldn't have arbitrarily small or arbitrarily large amounts of
energy, they could only have multiples of a standard "quantum" of energy.Eventually scientists realized this explained why some materials are conductors of
electricity and some aren't -- since atoms with differing energy electron orbits
conduct electricity differently. This understanding was crucial to building a
transistor, since the crystal at its core is made by mixing materials with varying
amounts of conductivity.http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/info/quantum.html[^][^] http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2000-03/952639215.Ph.r.html[^]
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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dan neely wrote:
Unfortunately transistors work based on quantum mechanical principles. According to Classical Physics they won't work. The closest you're going to get in laymans terms is "When voltage is applied to the control lead MAGIC HAPPENS and it connects the input and output leads. When the voltage is removed from the control the connection is broken."
Modern 45 nm transistors may have quantum mechanical principles, but I think regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation. 1. Pure silicon does not conduct because there are no floating electrons. 2. By "doping" silicon with impurities to the left or right on the periodic table, you create atoms in the lattice structure with extra free electrons or missing electrons (known as holes). 3. Look up the operation of a P-N junction. It's something about how current can only flow from the positively doped silicon to the negatively doped silicon because there are no excess electrons in the P-type silicon to start current flow the other way. If you make the junction too small or raise the voltage too high, you get quantum tunneling of electrons across the P-type silicon, but that's not an issue with transistors that you can see. 4. MOSFETs are fun. That stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor, which explains their function. They have an N-P-N arrangement of silicon with a layer of oxide covering the trio and then a layer of metal above that. If you try to pass current across through the N-P-N silicon, the N-P reverse diode junction blocks it. But if you apply a positive voltage to the metal at the top, the whole thing acts as a capacitor, pulling a layer of electrons out of the P-type silicon to create a temporary N-type channel right up against the oxide layer. This allows current to flow across because now you have some N-N-N above the N-P-N. Martin, I highly commend you for your curiosity and desire to learn the basics of physics and how they power our computers. The knowledge itself is not necessary to be a coder, but that inquisitive mentality is what makes someone an excellent problem solver. Sort of changing the subject, but still on the topic of physics basics, how do people feel about the current level of knowledge about conservation of energy, flows of heat, etc.? How many people realize that energy saving light bulbs don't help in places that are simultaneously running electric heaters? Or, why is running air conditioner in reverse bet
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Interesting points! Have you seen the 'shouting at hard drives slows them down' video? :)
destynova wrote:
'shouting at hard drives slows them down' video?
I tried, with the Google query (( shouting hard drive windows )), but at least the first few links did not seem to say anything about Microsoft playing "catch up". Since this DTRACE-demo is talking about milliseconds, obviously ETW has the precision to give us this kind of information, but, correct me if I'm wrong, Microsoft does not expose their ETW-trace-points like a file of "Debug Symbols".
pg--az
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destynova wrote:
'shouting at hard drives slows them down' video?
I tried, with the Google query (( shouting hard drive windows )), but at least the first few links did not seem to say anything about Microsoft playing "catch up". Since this DTRACE-demo is talking about milliseconds, obviously ETW has the precision to give us this kind of information, but, correct me if I'm wrong, Microsoft does not expose their ETW-trace-points like a file of "Debug Symbols".
pg--az
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Charvak Karpe wrote:
regular NPN transistors and MOSFETs have classical operation
While "regular" transistors are not flirting with the theoretical limits to their miniaturization, as you clearly essentially know to even talk about "lattice" or "free electrons", these concepts are intrinsically quantum mechanical, an NPN transistor isn't analogous to say a triode.
Charvak Karpe wrote:
empty bottle of syrup turned upside down
For an exciting video try the google query (( PITCH DROP EXPERIMENT )).
pg--az
I would beg to differ! An FET (the T means transistor) is essentially a triode and functions much the same as a vacuum tube triode although at a much lower voltage. the only difference between an NPN transistor and a vacuum tube triode is that the transistor requires a positive (+) to turn it on and a vacuum tube triode (and an FET) requires a negative (-) bias to turn it off. Otherwise both an NPN transistor and a vacuum tube triode are exactly analogous. The emitter is analogous to the cathode, the base is analogous to the grid and the collector is analogous to the plate. With an FET the source is analogous to the cathode (although there are both N-channel and P-channel FETs which have the opposite polarities) the gate is analogous to the grid and the drain is analogous to the plate. All of the mentioned devices have three connections which function in almost exactly the same way and intrinsically do so at the quantum level. Besides, intrinsically, triode means three electrodes. Both transistors and vacuum tubes have both Newtonian and quantum characteristics. However for the most part we use the smooth curves of the "real" world to describe their characteristics while any transfer of energy happens in distinct quanta. Both transistor and vacuum tube noise are quantum phenomena but they are usually expressed as DB in the analog world and mostly irrelevant in the digital world. All energy converted in a resistor can be expressed in the simple formula E=IR where E is volts, I is Amperes, and R is Ohms. Algebraically it is a linear function but at the quantum level Schrodinger's cat has the final say. You might just as well have said that everything is intrinsically quantum mechanical which adds nothing to the conversation. Diodes were discovered before quantum mechanics was even a theory and so were electricity and x-rays. There was great controversy as to whether light was composed of particles or waves because it has the characteristics of both. To learn basic electronics and Newtonian physics does not at all require any knowledge of quantum mechanics at all. I learned about donors and holes in semiconductors and electrons, neutrons, and protons in my electronics class and also noise but it really wasn't necessary to know to do design work with either transistors or vacuum tubes. In fact it was many years later that I even heard about quantum mechanics. It is commendable that somebody is curious enough to want to know electronics and physics. In fact a basic grounding in Physics should be ma
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:thumbsup:I would also highly recommend the Feynman Lectures, easy and comprehensive for both electronics and physics. Charles Pikell
Thanks all, I'll get to grips with the basics first then come and revisit this thread for the further reading/viewing suggestions. It's not really to benefit my programming directly but more for my own interest. As I program a computer all day every day I figure I should at least have some idea how it works! @sibrowne I did see a few of the the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures series. Coincidentally I saw the one on processors just after reading Jon Stokes "inside the machine" and found it excellent for covering very simply some things that had been bugging me throughout reading that. (like how on earth one can physically manufacture chips containing millions of transistors) @mi5ke Chris Bishop in his lecture above did also include a water pipe demo to demonstrate logic gates. At the time I just assumed that it was a simplistic analogy bearing little relation to actual hardware implementations - I clearly should have been paying more attention!
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Yes, I listened to it again and he very clearly says DTRACE, which has its own Wikipedia write-up and is to me one of Sun's big value-adds. DTRACE seems to be way ahead of Microsoft's ETW, at least based on my limited information.
pg--az
Oh, I had seen the Pitch Drop Experiment at the Ig Nobel Awards at some point. I think glass flows too, although even slower because the thickness variations aren't noticeable until windows get really old. The rest of the University of Queensland Physics Museum looks fun to browse too. It appears that the shouting at hard drives effect is real, huh? I agree with the posts pointing out that the behaviour of electrons in semiconductors is driven by quantum physics. But it's almost like how chemistry is really quantum too. When we say sodium has an extra electron in its outer shell and chlorine has a missing electron, the formation of salt is a quantum effect. I kind of took high school chemistry for what it was without questioning the reasons for why electrons behave the way they do. It's all about what level of abstraction is good enough for you. Computer scientists are fine working down to the logic gate or switch level of abstraction. As an electrical engineer, I got exposed to thinking about how those switches work down to the level of modelling the charge distribution and flow in a P-N junction. If I were more scientific, I'd want to know more about the quantum nature of electron availability. And we could drill further down to quarks, etc. But I think it remains true that you don't have to understand P-N junctions to understand how gates make up a computer and as Edwin pointed out you don't need to know quantum physics to accept the level of abstraction that semiconductor engineering involves until you get to the modern cutting edge. Alan, I'd love to write articles on Physics applied to daily life, breaking down concepts to be as simple as possible, but I get distracted by other projects like programming stuff. Thanks for the interest, though. It's motivation to bump it up on my list of tasks. I should start thinking about a list of important concepts and a map of in what order they should be presented. Maybe I should write case studies aimed at an audience who have had at least basic exposure to high school physics. It's hard to write good definitions of energy/work, power, heat. I remember having a hard time grasping Work = Force * distance and not Work = F * time. Pushing against an immovable object sure feels like work. But the value-add is in pointing out simple applications of basic physics, like answering the question, "What determines the minimum energy required to make a helicopter levitate?" Hint: think momentum/energy. There is no limit because the ideal chopper would m