SPOT
THE MISTAKES!
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These articles in SPOT THE MISTAKE are the most import discussions l have produced because they teach electronics “IN REVERSE.” They teach how NOT to design circuits and you can learn more in this direction than a 3 hour lecture.
That's the way I learned.  Fixing 35,000 TV's.  You get to know how to design things properly.
I have recently proof-read a number books for beginners in electronics and they are filled with mistakes.
All the mistakes located by other readers concentrated on incorrect lettering or wording.
None of them picked up the overall lack of understanding of the author about circuit diagram layout, selection of component values or descriptions of how the circuit or components work.
“the current goes in the long lead of a photo-transistor” is one absurd description (as all the leads are the same length).
And half a description of how a 555 lC works is no description at all.
A layout diagram is NOT a schematic. A layout diagram helps you wire up a component on a prototype board.
A schematic enables you to instantly see what the circuit does and it needs component values. They are entirely different.
There is not one schematic in any of his books. They are all layout "up-side-down" drawings and l can't figure out how any of the projects work.
If l can't, how do you expect a beginner to?
I have never cluttered a schematic with R1, R2 etc.  . ..  only component values.
And 470 for a resistor needs the designator:  470R. 
Resistors should be rectangles and not zig zag lines. You can put the value inside the rectangle to simplify the diagram.
The whole idea of a schematic is to produce a “picture” that can be analysed instantly.
I can look through a book of 1,200 circuits and determine what each circuit does, instantly.

Everything in the books we are discussing, can be found on PINTEREST website. You will find hundreds of books and projects and you have to be careful if the project works or not. Nothing is tested.

https://au.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=electronics.books

MAKE BOOKS
There are a number of books from the enterprise known as MAKE, written by the author: Charles Platt.
On the surface, these books look to be well presented, with thick pages and glossy photographs of so many things.
I had previously glanced though one of these publications and noted a number of mistakes, but did not take the matter any further.
However the author contacted my by email one day and I mentioned the fact that a book had a number of mistakes.
He seemed enthusiastic and wanted me to send him the mistakes I had found.
After a few more emails he continued to accept the corrections and then sent an email:
"I'm blocking you now."

Why am l critical of the books published by Make?
Because I did not get an answer from the author, or the publisher, as you will find out later.
I am critical because the books do not provide a real understanding of electronics.
Not only do they contain a lot of mistakes but they do not follow the accepted way to show a schematic.
If you look at all the books of schematics, they show the connections to Integrated Circuits in a particular way so the viewer can instantly recognise the chip.

LAYOUT DIAGRAMS
In the Make publications, the diagrams are LAYOUT diagrams to help the constructor place the jumpers on a breadboard.
This is perfectly fine, but it is not educating the constructor in electronics.
The book costs about $30 and for this money l would expect it to teach the subject.
At the end of the day, l gained nothing from the book or the experiments.
Some were extremely complex with lots of logic gates.  TTL IC's
I have to say this type IC went out 30 years ago and was replaced with tiny 8 pin microcontrollers.
That was one of the reasons micros became so popular. 8 TTL chips cost more than a single micro and the board is one tenth the size.
The concept of using lots of gates has “gone out the window, years ago” and a book like this is “flogging a dead horse.”
If the circuits had been in schematic-form, the constructor may have learned something, but when they are a jumble of wires and jumpers on a breadboard, the whole exercise: “falls flat.”
But that’s the problem with so many of the YouTube projects. They are either badly designed, faulty or don’t teach anything electronic.
And the end result is a mass of constructors that are not really learning the basics of electronics.
It’s “the blind leading the blind.” The authors are not sufficiently versed in electronics to present a quality project and none of them know enough to be able to describe its operation.
And that’s why we have a whole generation of constructors with a smattering of knowledge.
Fortunately a lot of them have taken on programming microcontrollers, where just a little knowledge of electronics is enough to get a project working.

I cannot imagine why a writer would put layout diagrams in a book that is supposed to be for beginners and supposed to be educational.

When you look at the layout diagrams in the book, l would not be able to describe any of them because a circuit diagram has every component in a particular location and the gates are placed individually on the diagram so you can see what they are doing.
Another stupidity of Layout Diagrams is this: You cannot compare one schematic to another.
All the projects in the book are worthless. Not only because they use old TTL technology but nothing is explained about the operation of the circuit or how to test it.
Then we come to discussions on YouTube from contributors who have looked at the cost of the kit for the book. They all say it is enormously overpriced. Some say the pins on the relay are too short and others say the parts have a different pin-out.
Not one reader has said he has built any of the projects and not one has said he had learnt anything from the book. That’s a clear acknowledgement of what l am saying.
The whole package is overpriced and delivers nothing.

REPLY FROM CHARLES PLATT
The reply from Charles Platt, Make Publications and ….. ware Publications has been absolute ZERO.
I never expected a reply because the errors and comments l made were so damaging that they could do nothing but “shut the door.” All they said was “the discussion is over,” “l am deleting you” and silence.
Never had they met a comment that was more than change a component value or add a component to the list.
Never had they met a person capable of looking at the overall failures in the book and commenting on the circuit diagrams, the false statements, the use of “pre-historic TTL chips” and never mentioned the fundamental concept of circuit design: BUILDING BLOCKS.
On top of this, no mention is made of the fact that all circuits are designed around a phenomena called: THE VOLTAGE DIVIDER.
A little bit of recognition would be a wonderful thing, considering they are being shown things that will improve their standing in the educational field.
It’s all fun to present big colourful pictures of projects but if Tandy had produced its 100 in 1 set of projects with layout diagrams, l would have learned NOTHING.
Even after 50 years, l cannot read a layout diagram. It means nothing to me. It’s just a jumble.
And that’s why the young enthusiast is getting no-where.
He is building things and poking wires into breadboards without an understanding.
No-where is there even the slightest mention of how the circuit works or how to test it or fix it.
If you expect a beginner to poke a hundred wires into a breadboard without a mistake, you are fooling yourself.
I would not waste time with a 6 chip project. Without a schematic, the whole endeavour is worthless.
And l would not waste $60.00 to $100.00 or more on a set of components that can be bought on-line for $20.00.

The book is a piece of Junk. When does something become JUNK? When it does not perform the task it was purchased for.
The requirement of this book is to teach electronics. To educated the beginner.
It is not a text book "of engineering."   It is a set of projects for the beginner.
And how this education is passed to the beginner is unknown by the beginner.
He does not know what is to be learned.
You can “feed him anything” and he will “suck it in.”
And that’s where the book “falls down.”
I happen to know how to teach and what to teach.
I learned from my years at university. I came out understanding NOTHING.
I had to start by teaching myself. The instructors taught me nothing. I hadn’t even handled a transistor!
And this book is just a repeat of this. The transfer of electronics understanding from this book is seriously lacking. The main feature of understanding schematics is absent.
And without this, the projects provide NOTHING.


WHY AM I SO ABRASIVE?
I have taken it upon myself to expose all these worthless books and videos and lectures from Universities since the day I was scammed by Mimms III with his "Book 2" on electronics. I bought book l and was waiting for book 2. I had to get  my cousin in the US to send me a copy at enormous expense and when I got it, I found it was just a re-gurgitation of Book 1.
This "got my back up" and I vowed to never CON anyone with the same scam.
I used Mimms grid layout to write many of my books and he was upset with my "thievery."
However it was a huge success.
After that I proof-read many books and sent them to the publisher. They were never re-printed.
Proof-reading is not just a blind reading of the text, but an analysis of what the author is delivering but also delivering improvements.
That's why a proof-reader has to be competent in the field being analysed so the publication is adding to the knowledge of the reader.
That has obviously not been the case with the MAKE set of books.
And that's why I have produced these pages of mistakes.
Not for the benefit of MAKE, but for the benefit of the reader, who has been over-charged for works that are simply copies of data that can be easily accessed on the web, via Google. 
Platt asked me why I didn't write my own encyclopaedia. I didn't because it is already on the web. I don't COPY and PASTE things.  I produce new information that has never been written before.

FREE
Everything is FREE on the internet and you certainly do not have to pay $30 for a book filled with errors, mistakes and junk content.  
In 50 years l have never had a technical representative at a publishing house respond with an email that says he is finished communicating with me and “don’t waste our time.”
This is the sort ignorance l have received in the past 50 years from Americans who think the “sun shines out of their arse.”
In fact the understanding of electronics in the US field is very poor - almost non-existent.
In 50 years l have not had a single competent technical reply from an American.
Some of the things they write makes you wonder where their understanding comes from.
Maybe from university. Because University YouTubes are embarrassing.
Not one YouTube covers a topic in a practical way.
They all introduce mathematics and expressions that l have never used in my life and would produce completely erroneous results.
You have no idea how a circuit (stage) will perform without full details of the input signal and the load on the output. And an input signal does not come from a “signal generator.”

In Australia, a technical writer for Electronics Australia made a simple mistake about charging a battery and his 20 years of technical writing was finished.
Junk, like in these MAKE books would not get “the light of day.”
Saying “a fuse is made from nichrome wire” and a white LED requires 2v, is simply an unforgettable mistake.
And then to leave these faults in subsequent printings for 12 years, shows the ignorance of the readers.
If the writer had any capability at all, he would have designed Printed Circuit Boards with hollow pins on each land and IC sockets on the board so the beginner could fit the leads of the components down the pins and create a PCB module without any soldering required.
But this is way beyond the thinking and intelligence of the writer and he has finished up with a crowded breadboard that delivers no benefit to the beginner.
I would not build a complex, junk circuit on breadboard, so why do you expect a beginner to do it? What does he learn?  There is not even a schematic in the book!!!
That's the intelligence level of Americans. No wonder they voted for TRUMP!

MORE ON CIRCUIT LAYOUTS
There are so many faults in Make more electronics book, but one of the biggest faults is the way the circuits are laid out.
All circuits work on a feature called VOLTAGE DIVISION. (Voltage-Divider).
This means the voltage across each component depends on its resistance.
To make it easy to see how this applies to each of the components, we draw the positive rail at the top and the 0v rail at the bottom.
Now, when we have two components in series, we can see the top component will have a certain voltage across it and the bottom component will have a voltage across it.
The voltage across each component may be the same but we say the top component is “sitting higher” as it will have full rail voltage on the top lead and mid rail voltage on the other lead.
This is clear and obvious when the power rails are at the top and bottom of the circuit.
In this book, the rails are on the left and right and this VOLTAGE DIVIDER principle is not obvious.
That’s why this book is such a bad instruction manual.
On top of this, the other components are so badly placed, and the wording is so inaccurate, that the reader is “sidelined” from reality.
It is worse than not providing anything at all.
Here are a number of other things I do not agree with:
The author does not like: 3k3 or 4k7, but 3.3k and 4.7k. And he says the pins of an IC are “leads.”
He has never heard of “e-z clips” or “jumper leads” and uses breadboards with a single power rail on each side. These breadboards have “gone out with the ark”
He has never mentioned the flat spot on the side of a LED or understands a “trimmer” is not the name for a “trim-pot.”

In his discussion on soldering, he does not mention SOLDER-TIP PASTE.  This is not solder-paste for surface mount components.
Here is a picture of of the $3.00 paste and the junk 60/40 Chinese solder.

Just dip the hot tip into the paste very quickly and the tip is cleaned of all impurities and makes a much quicker, cleaner joint. When you use it, you will EVERY go back.
Obviously the author has never used this product..
And here's another observation:
No author has said he has had any problem of Chinese solder.
All the Chinese solder is RUBBISH.
It does not melt. It does not stick and the parts fall off.
To use up the junk Chinese solder you have to twist a meter of the junk with good 60/40 solder (with an electric drill) and they two will combine to make a good joint, when you use them together.
The junk Chinese solder does not contain enough tin (as it is much more expensive than lead).

 THINKING: "OUTSIDE THE BOX"
You have to “think outside the box” to explain why MAKE books are so uninformative.
You have to look at how l have presented my hundreds of projects.
The first item in a project is a schematic of the circuit. Not a layout and not a photo.
With a schematic l know exactly what the project does and l can continue or “move on.”
MAKE projects don’t do this. I have to “look and search and wonder, and turn the page around” to work out what the project is doing.
That’s why the American electronics industry is so lacking in education.
All the American hobbyist electronics magazines have folded. Even when they had 3 in the market-place, the sales were extremely small for such a large country. None of them provided a back-up with kits or boards for any of the projects and Radio Shack was just a junk store with odd components. The only supplier with quality kits was HEATH-KIT but the prices were too high for the beginner. The few electronics parts stores were miles apart and all went bankrupt, years ago. 
The only thing that helped the beginner was Tandy’s 30-in-1 or 100-in-1 box of projects with jumper wires and breadboard.
These projects showed the schematic and the layout of parts on the board and were the backbone to teaching electronics in the ‘50’s to ‘90’s.
l had one young enthusiast wanting to work for me with his audio amplifiers and gold detectors and he was able to draw the circuit without any references. I hired him immediately
A circuit is a “picture.”
I can look through a book of 1,200 circuits and instantly see how they work and pick the circuit or part of the circuit l need.
All circuits consist of BUILDING BLOCKS and you can combine these to produce or design a completely different project.
This saves you: “reinventing the wheel.”
None of these techniques are covered in any MAKE publications because the writers have no understanding of these techniques.
It’s “the blind leading the blind.”
And that’s the sad part of the electronics education system.
All the knowledgeable instructors have retired and newcomers have no access to educational kits at affordable prices.

MY EMAILING PROBLEMS
There are far too many email address for the author, the publisher, the kit supplier, the errata, the other publisher and still more.
The author contacted me and l said there were lots of mistakes in the book and he wanted a list. I provided a list and got no reply.
For the list of 15 mistakes he could have replied and thanked me for the corrections but these people are so arrogant and think they are perfect. Just because no-one has discovered the mistakes in 12 years does not make them irrelevant.
To make sure the mistakes were sent to the publishers, l also contacted them.
They said the list has to be sent to their errata email. The errata address only accepts text! My list included images. That’s how primitive the publishers are. Not one complainant has been able to send a fault with a diagram.
Then they said a different publisher had taken over the publication and l had to start all over again.
To the second publisher l sent the errata and a description of the piezo diaphragm and the piezo buzzer and mechanical buzzer. The reply from Jim Gleaves their Technical Support person was:
Piezo devices are fully discussed in Encyclopaedia of Electronic Components, volume 2.
stop wasting people's time.

Jim

Jim Gleaves | Technical Support
O'Reilly Media, Inc. | Contact Us

This is the sort of "wonderful reaction" l have received from American publishers over the past 50 years.
They think they rule the world. They have the attitude of TRUMP.
Overall US books are very poor. They all miss the point of actual instruction, actual EDUCATION and covering the most important part: HOW THE CIRCUIT WORKS.
I have proof-read many books before the second publication and found enormous mistakes.
Not one book was re-published.
It’s not just the mistakes but looking at the projects and seeing they could have been done simpler and better.
And that’s the overall problem with the experiments in this book.
The author has not heard of the 74c14 CMOS hex Schmitt trigger IC.
It has six individual Schmitt trigger inverters that can perform amazing feats with a few surrounding components.
I have used one in an alarm circuit and when you see the schematic, you can see exactly how each section works.
This alarm detects sounds in the room and has  3 or 4 piezo sirens to completely overpower the intruders hearing so he does not know if he has been detected and leaves.

That’s what teaching is all about. GETTING SOMETHING ACROSS.
And that’s where the book: “falls down flat.” It’s just a jumble.
Sticking jumpers into a breadboard is not learning electronics.
Teaching electronics is no different to teaching someone to recognise a picture.
The picture is a circuit. A CIRCUIT DIAGRAM. A SCHEMATIC. And every component must be placed in a certain position on the schematic to perform the required task and to show its task.
And all circuits consist of BUILDING BLOCKS. That’s all l know. That’s all l have to know.
A huge, complex circuit consists of individual Building Blocks and that’s why it is so easy to learn. You just have to understand how individual building blocks work and then see how they are connected together.
Connecting things is called INTERFACING when connecting a device such as a switch, microphone, relay, speaker etc.
Or COMBINING when connecting one BLOCK to the next. Blocks are generally connected with a wire. . . Called direct or DC connection, with a capacitor. . . called AC connection or maybe an opto-coupler or transformer.
That’s why you can create a completely new project by taking previously-designed blocks and connecting them together.
These are all concepts that have never been covered in any text book or project book.
That's why I cover them on my website.
And that's why I get emails from readers of my magazine, saying they learned more from my articles than their University course.

BUILDING BLOCKS
Yes. I am particularly annoyed at most of the publications, books and YouTube videos as well as lectures from universities.
Almost all of them are covering the topic incorrectly. I can see it, because l have been designing circuits for 50 years and never used any of their methods or computations. Circuits are not designed with mathematics.
The biggest mistakes revolve around simple transistor circuits.
Not one lecture has explained how a transistor circuit works.
You can see this by the component values they use.
The use an input signal that comes from a signal-generator,  it has much more “strength” than reality and the use an output load that l have never experienced.
The biasing of the transistor is going to severely attenuate the input signal and the output needs to match the impedance of the following stage to get good signal transfer.
You might think you can do this with mathematics, but none of the impedance and resistance values are really known.
All these change according to the frequency of the signal and signals are not only complex but you need to hear the result and decide if the bass or treble needs to be attenuated or lifted.
You will have to change some of the components, so all your mathematical calculations have been for nothing.
Why waste your time in the first place?
Why not talk about how they circuit works and say that for a self-biased common emitter stage, the gain will be about 70.
Then, all you have to do is set the collector current at between 0.1mA and 1mA and use a base bias resistor to get mid-rail voltage.
You just need a $10.00 multimeter to do this.
Start with 22n to 100n for the input capacitor and 1u to 10u for the output.
Nothing else is needed.
The circuit is self-biasing and the signal is so clear that you think the person is in the room. That’s the easy part.
You need to interface (connect) the stage to an input device and the next stage.
This is where some knowledge is needed.
We classify the input of our stage as MEDIUM. This means it is not HIGH and not LOW.
But l am not going to give it any value because the value will change enormously with the frequency of the signal.
And secondly, there will be a lot of attenuation in the signal, no matter what we do.
The amount of attenuation (signal loss) will depend on the strength of the signal and the strength is determined by the value of the load resistor of the device delivering the signal.
I will give you one simply example.
If the load resistor of the input device is 10k, and the input of our transistor stage is 5k, these two values will produce a voltage divider of 25%. And that the maximum you will get into the stage.

EASY ELECTRONICS
Charles Platt has also produced a book called: EASY ELECTRONICS.
ln it he constantly refers to an AA cell as a “battery.”

You have to keep to convention. A battery is a number of cells.
How this simple fact was missed the proof-readers is beyond me.
Another major mistake in the book is in the diagrams. It is normal convention to put the load in the POSITIVE LINE. This means the negative rail, the 0v rail is drawn across the bottom of the circuit from the battery to the lower lead of the load. A switch is inserted in the positive lead and the top of the load.
This is CONVENTION. This is the way it is done.

Every book abides by this convention so circuits can be easily understood.
You certainly don’t deliver anything else to a beginner.
This book should be withdrawn.
Another major mistake is also in the diagrams.
It is convention to place the load in the “collector circuit.” . . . . the collector lead, so the emitter is connected to the 0v rail.

Incorrect layout

Incorrect layout

The correct circuit to
test a transistor

This is called COMMON EMITTER design and is the arrangement l have used for the past 50 years. I have never used the arrangement shown in the book, which is EMITTER FOLLOWER or COMMON COLLECTOR.
There are a lot of technical reasons why the Common Emitter arrangement is used and you can find out the reasons in THE TRANSISTOR AMPLIFIER article.
The arrangement he has used teaches the beginner nothing because it is never used.
If we have a circuit with a battery, resistor and globe, the convention is to place the resistor above the globe as it will have full rail voltage on the top lead and the globe will have 0v on its bottom lead.
This allows the VOLTAGE DIVIDER concept to be understood. This is the concept of actually TEACHING ELECTRICAL or Electronic theory.
The author does not have the pleasure of creating his own terminology.
Experiment 5 will work with a LED but not a transistor. That’s because an Emitter Follower circuit cannot be used to deliver high currents. The reason is complex and is covered on my website. Just another complete failing from the writer.
The author has omitted a current limiting resistor on pin 3 of the 7555. This might be ok for 4.5v but the beginner may think a resistor is NEVER needed.
This is not a “Spot The Mistake” book. It is supposed to be a teaching book.
A LED does not have a “+” and “-“ lead. It is technically identified by the cathode lead “k” and this is either the shorter lead or the lead next to a flat-spot on the side of the LED.
This is an understanding known by all technically literate writers, engineers, lecturers, professors and students.
And anyone not following this convention and understanding, needs an education.
I don’t know where the author got the breadboard without a positive and negative bus (down the sides), from. But maybe you can find one in a museum.
Pin 4 of a 7555 is a high-impedance pin and can have a 100k to 1M so the photo transistor can pull the pin down to less than 0.5v, to activate the chip, with the slightest amount of light. With 10k you need high illumination. Using a 10k resistor shows a complete lack of understanding how a photo transistor works.
Overall the book gets an “F” . . . for frighteningly awful. One of the worst publications l have proof-read in my life.
How it got past the technical staff, proof-readers, editors, coffee-boy-staff, teachers, professors, book-pirates, hundreds of “testers” and thousands of readers, is beyond me.
Experiment 10     The letters on the transistor should be labelled cbe to let the beginner know, as the transistor can have two different identifications. (from two different types and/or from different manufacturers. . . . . it’s just a jumble).
The same for the photo-transistor.  It should be labelled  c and e.

The leads of the transistor should be clearly identified

The leads of the photo-transistor should be clearly identified

Experiment 10.  The 7555 lC does not see any negative voltage on pin 4 from the 10k resistor.

The voltage divider on pin 4 creates a voltage on pin 4 that needs to be less than about 0.5v for the lC to detect a low and this “turns the chip off.”   Any voltage above about 0.6v allows the IC to operate.
That’s why you should never label a circuit with + and -  but rather “rail voltage” and 0v.
Otherwise l am confused and don’t understand anything.


Charles Platt has a website: www.plattelectronics.com where he says you will find additional helpful information.
I went to the site and found links to random suppliers of kits and parts with nothing to do with the book or any help at all.

 CRITICAL
I am critical of all these authors and university courses because they do NOT teach “practically anything“ that is beneficial, accurate or applicable to understanding the basics of electronics.
I learned from my own experience where I completed a 3 year electronics course some 60 years ago and applied for my first job and was accepted immediately.
To my horror, l could not perform any of the tasks AT ALL. I had no idea what to do. I had been taught absolutely NOTHING.
Fortunately the boss did not say anything and l learned very quickly.
But when l went back to the University with a TV repair problem, the instructor said "he was not here to fix my TV."
I never returned to University.
And that’s why l am so critical of these books and YouTube videos and University lectures.
They are completely “off the mark”
They tie up the student with mathematics that is completely irrelevant and unnecessary.
What should be taught is an overall understanding of how the circuit works, how each component determines the operation and function of the circuit and how to find and fix it, if a fault occurs.
I have never used mathematics in my life as it does not work. Component values can have wide tolerances and then, to see an answer to two decimal places (1% accuracy) with 20% capacitors, is absurd.

WHISTLEBLOWER
There has to be whistleblowers like me as 99.9% of electronics hobbyists don’t understand any of the mistakes in the book and the other 10% don’t care.
Thousands of hopeful electronics students go to University and spend up to $70,000 on a course that will teach them nothing and give them no possibility of employment.
The percentage of students completing a course and finding work in the chosen profession, is less and 25%. The rest find work delivering parcels and cleaning shops at 3AM.
So, whatever you learn, it must be factual and beneficial.
And the only way to learn is to teach yourself.
If you think a school is going to teach you anything, you are mistaken.
Where did the teacher get his understanding from?
It’s the “blind leading the blind.”
The old saying is: “lf you can  .   do . . . if you can't . . . teach.”
The input to learning electronics is 99% your own effort.
I have not found one single article or lesson or text-book or University course that covers the absolute essentials of understanding how circuits work.
They don’t even teach soldering.
Show me one course that covers the two ways to solder.
One is to have the iron at the specified temperature and solder slowly. The other is to have the iron at a much higher temperature and solder very quickly.
You would think the high temperature would destroy the component but it cleans the joint very quickly and the time taken is reduced and the component does not overheat.
Courses are expensive enough without someone coming along with a book filled with mistakes and presentations that will make you look stupid, if repeated.
Not only that but the book teaches you almost nothing.
No schematics or description of how the circuit works. And there were book after book like that from TAB books and other authors that just ruined the market.
Electronics is a visual subject. Something that has never been explained.
It starts with a circuit diagram. Every component must be placed on a diagram in a particular location and then its value is taken into consideration as to what it does.
Each component has a symbol and it does not sit dormant on a schematic. Capacitors and electrolytics charge and discharge and the resistors and leads of integrated circuits, connected to these components, rise and fall.
The output of gates rise and fall and everything is “moving up and down.” That how l see a circuit and that how the inventors of CAD packages see a circuit and produced Circuit Simulation packages.
I have never used one of these packages in my life because l can see the circuit “moving.”
And that what’s you have to be able to do, to understand electronics.