Scientists on Reddit

Forrest M. Mims III

Amateur scientist, author of Getting Started in Electronics

u/Forrest_Mims ↗AMA only

How we know it's theirs

The 2016 r/science AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 1 post and 49 comments from u/Forrest_Mims, all from 2016, most often in r/science.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/science

On “Science AMA Series: I'm amateur scientist and author Forrest M. Mims III. For many years I wrote books and developed lab kits for RadioShack, which still stocks my best-selling “Getting Started in Electronics.””

Hi Forrest! Thank you for writing those little Engineer's Mini Notebooks . For young people excited about electronics, as I was, these are terrific bite sized introductions to the field. My question: How did these books come about? Did Radio Shack approach you to write them, or…

u/Forrest_Mims replied

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Radio Shack editor Dave Gunzel was familiar with my hand-lettered lab notebooks, and at he asked if I could do an entire book the same way I prepared the notebooks. This became the first "Engineer's Notebook," which sold 650,000 copies. The first few pages were prepared with a Selectric typewriter. I then inserted a signature to ease the reader into the hand lettered concept Dave wanted. After several pages, the book shifted to entirely hand-lettering and illustrating. The book was written/drawn with India ink on toothed Mylar, which meant a single error required redoing an entire page. This was a very tedious project, which drew blood from the middle finger of my right hand.

Excerpt

More moments

A redditor wrote in r/science

Not a question, but a thank you. I got started in electronics when this book came out around 79. I was 13 and biked to my Radio Shack, took examples from the notebook, started jamming 555's and 74xx's and those newfangled LED's into project board, and made real things. At some…

u/Forrest_Mims replied

You mentioned biking to Radio Shack. That reminds me about dictating my earliest Radio Shack books into a portable tape recorder while riding my bike 20 miles every afternoon.

Excerpt

A redditor wrote in r/science

Hi! I had your Getting Started in Electronics book as a kid and still own it! I'm a biochemist now, and I'm curious how ozone detection works - what is special about the ozone molecule that allows you to track it specifically?

u/Forrest_Mims replied

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Ozone efficiently absorbs UV-B and UV-C wavelengths. It also absorbs in the visible, with peaks around 590 nm and 610 nm (the Chappuis band), I detect ozone with a 2- or 3-channel instrument that measures sunlight at 300 nm, 305 nm and 311 nm. Since ozone absorbs more effectively at the lower wavelengths, the ratio of any two of these wavelengths is directly proportional to the amount of ozone between an observer and the sun (when corrected for the intervening air mass, pressure, etc.). The principle also works for detecting ambient ozone. I employ the Chappuis band to detect the height of the main stratospheric layer of ozone during twilight. This works surprisingly well, and the twilight result is usually within 5-10 percent of the height measured by balloon-launched ozonesondes. The UV instruments must use very expensive filters. The twilight method uses a 50-cent orange LED that detects at 600 nm.