Programmer branching out, where to begin?

Hi,

Just wondering if there is a good reference available that gives some good mid-level explanations of what various components do and why they are needed. To give a further clarification, I understand the very basics which you would get from going through an engineering college's physic's class. So I have the base idea of resistors, volts, amps, florins, ohms law, parallel vs. series etc and the math backing such. However, as soon as you get to anything relevant starting with oh say the transistor, I'm at a complete loss. I am truly very new to this and while wiring up a led is cake for me, I really don't understand what a transistor is doing when you are hooking it up to say a motor. What I have found by browsing around thus far is either way too elementary (The transistor revolutionized electronics!) or so buried in jargon that the author assumes you already know that it becomes unreadable. PNP NPN JBT? eh? Any help for someone trying to branch out without ticking off my adviser further and taking a class outside my plan?

For a long time when I was trying to understand transistors I'd be confused over the roll of a transistor...

It took me a while to cotton on that a transistor is like a swiss army knife, depending how you wire it, you can make it perform many actions...

A transistor can be used as a switch, it can be used to amplify, they can be used to regulate voltage, schmitt triggers can be made etc etc... once you get your head around that, the basic uses are easy to learn....

Florins?

Yes florins...

Florins nightingale? :smiley:

The dangers of posting late at night...farad. Not sure where florin came from.

Ok so transistor = swiss army knife. Any good swiss army knife manuals?

Yup loads..

My favourite has to be this site...

http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/200TrCcts/200TrCcts.html

For a good site on transistors try:-