Electrical Engineers and Mechanical Engineers -- seeking recommendations for non-engineer EE and ME introductory texts

[WhipperSnapper]

I may be interested in learning about Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering in the near future for professional development reasons. I have a strong natural sciences background and I'm looking for "101" books similar to comprehensive introductory text books on general biology, general chemistry, and general physics, etc. When I was an undergrad I studied calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra, but that was a great many years ago and today my mathematical background is merely mediocre. (My goal is to be able to read patents and patent applications and to be able to ask probing, intelligent questions about them.)

So, could someone please recommend comprehensive introductory texts about Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering? Are there any good qualitative introductory books for those who are not mathematically inclined?

If I decided that I wanted to delve deeper, what other core subjects in those fields would I want to study? (Blank is to Electrical Engineering as Biochemistry or Organic Chemistry are to General Chemistry.)

 

[z1ggy]

Its hard to really say there are general EE books. There are so many topics to cover..and its very hard to understand things without a fairly good math backround ( understanding of calc 3, diff eq, vectors and imaginary numbers). What areas do you want to learn about? Theres power ( which is what I do for now) , signals and systems, controls, microelectronics..So you see there is a wide range. Perhaps a good start would be a book I used when I was a soph. Its electrical science intro. by James Svoboda ( my professor). He is insanely smart( I may say genius level or close to) , but I think his text is easy to get. This is the basis really for all EE stuff. If you dont know this..good luck getting anywhere.

 

[Gibson486]

just get a text book that has a title similair to, "Electrical ENgineering for teh non-electrical engineer". They should all be pretty much the same content wise.

No matter what, you are going to start with voltages, current, charge, etc...then it just braches out to power, linear systems, non linear devices....

what sort if industry do you plan on using this in? I ask because half teh battle will be learning the language of that industry. If I say, "we will just get power from the bucket", and elelctronics engineer will have no idea what I am talking about.

 

[TecHNooB]

You're either going to get a history lesson, a very broad and useless description of what engineering is, or an intense math lesson (which may induce sleep). But, if you do tread down this path, feel free to post your questions on ATOT!

 

[MotF Bane]

You're looking at two extremely broad fields. Wikipedia can give you an idea of how wide-ranging they are, and what would be focus areas.

 

[JohnCU]

MIT OCW

they have electrical engineering intro courses i believe, with class material

http://ocw.mit.edu i think is the URL

 

[Modelworks]

For electronics I don't think anything compares to the Forest Mims books. I learned from them over 20 years ago when I was in my teens in high school. Radio shack used to sell his mini notebooks, not sure if they still do. He puts it in words anyone can understand. He includes the math but doesn't only focus on it like some electronics books.
Highly recommended for anyone , not just people wanting to be engineers.
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-...&qid=1247064865&sr=8-1


Radio shack has the book.
http://www.radioshack.com/prod....jsp?productId=3433933