Questions, answered straight

Start with Getting Started in Electronics. It assumes no background: it begins with what electricity is, goes through the components one by one, and ends with 100 circuits to build and test.

The three Engineer's Mini Notebook collections are references to keep beside it once you are building things.

Electronic Formulas, Symbols & Circuits gathers four notebooks: Formulas, Tables & Basic Circuits; Schematic Symbols, Device Packages, Design & Testing; Basic Semiconductor Circuits; and Digital Logic Circuits.

Timer, Op Amp, and Optoelectronic Circuits & Projects gathers three: 555 Timer IC Circuits; Op Amp Projects; and Optoelectronics.

Electronic Sensor Circuits & Projects gathers three: Sensor Projects; Solar Cell Projects; and Magnet & Magnet Sensor Projects.

Yes. Forrest M. Mims III lettered and illustrated these books by hand, and they are printed that way. It is the reason they read more like a careful engineer's notebook than a textbook.

No. You are buying the book only. The circuits use common, inexpensive parts that you source separately: a solderless breadboard, resistors, capacitors, LEDs, a few transistors and chips, and batteries. A multimeter helps.

The writing is plain and the drawings carry most of the explanation, so motivated students do use it. An adult should supervise anything involving soldering, mains power or tools, and should read any safety notes in the book with them first.

No. Academic Resources is an independent bookseller. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorised by Forrest M. Mims III or his publisher, Master Publishing, Inc.

The author's own site is forrestmims.org.

Yes: forrestmims@gmail.com, or through the contact page. Orders, returns, damaged parcels, or which book covers what: ask and you will get an answer.

What we cannot do is debug a circuit by email or advise on anything involving mains voltage. For that, find someone qualified who can look at the actual build.

That depends on where you are and which service is used, and we are not going to quote a number we cannot hold to. Current processing and delivery windows are on the shipping policy page, and the confirmation email you receive at checkout is the authoritative one for your order.

If your order is past the window shown there and tracking has not moved, email forrestmims@gmail.com with your order number and we will chase it.

Yes, we ship worldwide. International orders take longer than domestic ones, and the options and costs for your country are shown at checkout and on the shipping policy page.

Any import duty, sales tax or customs handling fee is set by your own country and charged by its customs authority, not by us, and it is not included in what you pay at checkout.

Tracking goes to the email address on your order once the parcel is handed to the carrier, so there is a gap between the order confirmation and the tracking email while the book is picked and packed. Once you have the number you can follow the shipment at 17track.net.

Two common reasons a tracking email goes missing: it landed in spam, or there is a typo in the address entered at checkout. Check spam first, then email forrestmims@gmail.com with your order number and we will resend it.

Email forrestmims@gmail.com with your order number and photographs of the damage, including the outer packaging if you still have it.

A damaged or incorrect item is ours to sort out, not something you should have to argue for. The same address handles a book that never arrived, the wrong title in the box, or a duplicate charge.

If the book is not what you needed, you have 30 days to say so and get your money back.

The specific conditions, including what the window runs from, the state the book needs to come back in, who covers return shipping and how the refund is issued, are set out on the refund policy page, and that page governs. Read it before you start a return rather than after.

Email forrestmims@gmail.com with your order number and one line on what is wrong. We will reply with the return instructions that apply to your order and your location.

Do not post the book back before contacting us. A parcel that arrives with nothing tying it to an order is slow to match up.