Book Review

BASIC NUCLEAR ELECTRONICS

by

Hai Hung ChiangWi ley-lnterscienceNew York 1969

The book contains 342 pages and consists of fourchapters entitled "Basic Electronic Devices and Circuits"(146 pp.), "Pulse Amplifiers and Single Channel Analy-zers"' (35 pp.), "Multichannel Pulse Height Analyzers"(37 pp.), and "Typical Nuclear and Electronic Instru-ments" (44 pp.).

According to the preface, the book is intendedto bridge the gap between theory and practice in elec-tronic instrumentation for nuclear measurements. Althoughthe text is well written in the sense that the explanationsare concise and flow smoothly, the book as a whole isdisappointing. To begin with, the technology of nuclearelectronics is moving very rapidly: the time from birth toobsolescence of a typical nuclear instrument is approxi-mately three years. On this time scale, "Basic NuclearElectronics" is out of date. Only one reference is givento a publication as recent as 1968, and the central themeof this paper is not mentioned in the text; all other ref-erences date from 1958 to 1967. Some of the circuitspresented as typical contain modern silicon transistors,but many more are designed for germanium transistorspopular ten years ago.

In many instances, the choice of material to becovered seems capricious, and the method of treatmentis inconsistent from topic to topic. As an example ofcapricious choice, more than half of the last chapter isdevoted to a detailed circuit description of the TektronixType 321 battery operated oscilloscope, which is not onlyout of place in a book of this type, but is too slow forgeneral use with modern nuclear instruments. By contrast,pole-zero cancellation and baseline restoration, two cir-cuit techniques which are critically important to highrate, high resolution gamma-ray spectrometry, are cover-ed not at all in the chapter on basic circuits, and only inpassing in the chapter on amplifiers. As an example ofinconsistency, the basic logarithmic relationship between

the voltage and current in a semiconductor diode is givenon page 45, but on pp. 54 and 55, a computation ofwaveforms ina clamping circuit is made in which it isassumed that the diode equivalent circuit is that of alinear resistor. The operating conditions are far outsidethe limits of validity for such an assumption, with theresult that the computed waveforms, while qualitativelycorrect, are quantitatively grossly in error. Ironically,the error hardly matters because the illustration chosenby the author has little practical significance for adesigner of nuclear instruments and none at all for auser.

A serious shortcoming of the book is the choiceof emphasis placed on various facets of circuit design:too much is left unsaid for the neophyte circuit designerand too much of the wrong kind of detail is given for theinstrument user.

The bibliography is inadequate, consisting ofa total of only 30 references, too few to be useful assource material in a book of this size and scope. Noneof the references is number keyed to the text; ten are toother books, 15 are to manufacturers' instruction manualsand internal reports of the Argonne and BrookhavenNational Laboratories, and only five to papers publishedin technical journals. In this reviewer's opinion, severalof the references included in the bibliography come muchcloser than Mr. Chiang to accomplishing his aim ofbridging the gap between theory and practice, and do sowith material substantially as current as that included inhis book.

Edward FairsteinTennelec, Inc.August 10, 1970.

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