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27 February 2004

A Sense for Science

Joseph J. Carr. Electronic Circuit Guidebook, Vol. 1. Sensors. (Indianapolis: Prompt Publications) 1997. 339 pages. Illustrated. ISBN 0-7906-1098-1.

Reviewed by Sheldon Greaves

Someone once remarked that the advance of science is directly tied to advances in instrumentation.  Whether you agree with that statement or not, the use of electronic sensing is now an integral part of scientific practice.  The amateur scientist would be well advised to learn the ways of electronic sensors, amplifiers, signal processing, A/D conversion, and so on.  As an introduction to this topic, Carr's book is a great place to start.

Many readers will already be familiar with Carr's work.  Until his death, he churned out an inexhaustible stream of articles and books on science, particularly on electronics.  But without question his best contribution to amateur science was "The Art of Science," an outstanding handbook on how science is done.  Sadly that excellent book is no longer in print, but Sensors has some familiar and welcome echoes.

The business of turning natural phenomena into electrical signals that a computer can acquire as data is a bigger enterprise than one might think at first.  Carr understands this and begins this book with a very concise and well-explained introduction to the nature of electronic signals and the elements of measurement, with a generous discussion of error and sources of error.  He describes various kinds of signals and how scientists look at them; I found his explanation of Fourier Series to be the best I've seen so far. You might want to dust off your trigonometry, although this isn't strictly necessary.  Carr does make use of some calculus notation, but again, this isn't absolutely necessary to understanding the material.

This is a book for people who are going to go build their own instruments, and for that reason will endear itself to practicing amateur scientists.  Carr goes into great detail with a mixture of circuit diagrams and plenty of basic explanation of the components used in sensing applications, and how they work.  He also provides plenty of brass-tacks advice for builders who wish to avoid the more common mistakes made by homebrew electronics enthusiasts.

In short, this is an excellent book for a novice or intermediate, but it is also full of good reference material that advanced users will value.  "Sensors" uses the topic of sensing to jump into all kinds of topics from statistics to physics that might go down easier in the presence of a practical application.  Although Carr does occasionally use technical terms that, in my view, should be explained as mentioned, a persevering reader will reap richly from this excellent book.