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Oldest Grandchild Graduates from High School

T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
What I think they ought to know is circuit concepts: voltage, current,
resonance, exponentials, feedback, transistor action, and basic opamp
functions... amplification, integration, gbw limits, things like that.
A week of "signals and systems" would be great too.

These are bright kids starting on a 5-year university degree but will
spend the first three years on sciences and then take 2 years of
engineering. The math is second nature to them, but they will absorb
both a lot better if they have some good instincts installed from day
one. I learned a lot more than other, smarter classmates because I'd
been an electronics hobbyist as a kid. When a professor drew a diagram
or an equation on the board, it clicked for me: so *that's* why that
works! My classmates kept their heads down and took notes about
equations, not realizing the gems they were missing.

I am talking about a different scenario here.

John
Have you even looked at the NEETS course?

It goes from basic electronics through some pretty advanced materials,
and it is segmented perfectly.

http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/index.htm
 
T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
It was my uncle's TV repair shop where I learned about electronics. I
learned how to solder when I was three.

Yet never learned how to clean them properly.
Where are the good EEs going to come from, now that most of the TV
repair shops are gone?

They are called factory authorized service locations, and they are
still around. Just a lot less HV is involved now. A lot less magnetics
too, since LCD and plasma displays don't require deflection coils.
Yeah, you've got to be diplomatic and leave them some shread of
self-respect.

Is that what you call what you do?
Or they'll bad-mouth you to the bosses after you're
gone.

Hahahaha... You're funny, Johnny.
 
T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
You guys (you and John) expect a short course to replace the years you spent
as a hobbyiest picking up stuff?

The years of gradually picking up the stuff (instead of the speed that
happens in a course) plus the motivation you already had aren't going to be
instilled by such a course.

Of course a class like that would really help the kids that have already
picked up a bunch on their own.

Robert

Your email should be robertISaYahoo!

http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/index.htm
 
T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
I walk around in my sox a lot.

Ties are for weddings, funerals, and *very* good French restaurants.

None of my customers wear ties, so why should I? When I visit a major
aerospace customer, I try to remember to wear a shirt that has
buttons.

John
Sounds like you are about as big on image projection as you are about
using equipment properly.
 
T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Do it without a second thought.


STOP top posting without a second thought, dipshit.

You learn, use and follow conventions when flying an aircraft...

Learn the conventions of Usenet and follow them as well.

Do it without a second thought.
 
T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have no idea what airstrip you are referring to. If you are talking about
Grass Valley Intentional Airpatch (KGOO) then

39-13-26.5000N / 121-00-11.1000W
39-13.441667N / 121-00.185000W
39.2240278 / -121.0030833

The Loma Rica horse training ring borders the airport to the north and west,
not the south and east.
Not according to the magnetic north indicator you placed on the image.

The track I see there is BELOW the strip, with reference to that
compass, and off the east end of the strip, with reference to that
compass.

So, either your image edit is wrong, or you are wrong.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Sounds like you are about as big on image projection as you are about
using equipment properly.

All I want to do is design stuff and then sell it. Which I do.

John
 
J

joseph2k

Jan 1, 1970
0
The said:
STOP top posting without a second thought, dipshit.

You learn, use and follow conventions when flying an aircraft...

Learn the conventions of Usenet and follow them as well.

Do it without a second thought.
As if you should talk prongie.
 
P

Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
Oldest Grandchild Graduates from High School....

http://analog-innovations.com/FamilyPixs/CaitlinGraduates.jpg

This is the daughter of my oldest daughter who just finished the
politics course in DC.

We atheists know where to educate our kids ;-)

A Catholic High School? I hope she doesn't take it too hard when she
goes to college and finds out that the world is older than 6000 years by
many orders of magnitude.
 
R

Robert

Jan 1, 1970
0
Paul Hovnanian P.E. said:
A Catholic High School? I hope she doesn't take it too hard when she
goes to college and finds out that the world is older than 6000 years by
many orders of magnitude.

Naah. The Earth and all the Fossil evidence was created 6000 years ago just
as a test of Faith.

http://xkcd.com/c258.html

Robert
 
T

The Great Attractor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Naah. The Earth and all the Fossil evidence was created 6000 years ago just
as a test of Faith.

So was total retardation. Of that branch, you belong.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
John Larkin said:
Hey, they want me to endow a scholarship, and I'd get to have some say
(recommendations, to be honest) about who would get it. I'm thinking
about how I would describe a kid who likes real electronics, but not
just computer stuff, and definitely not robotics.

What do you have against robotics? Just that a lot of people into them are
primarily slapping together hardware using off-the-shelf RC components and
controllers and not actually doing electronics design? Or something else?

I attended the OSU engineering expo last Friday. Lots of interesting stuff...
and they're pushing "TekBots" (guess who sponsors it) in a big way these
days...
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
RST Engineering (jw) said:
We don't teach at the university level. Indeed that is not our charter.
Could we? Sure. But what's the point?

I've always thought that leaving out phasors in 2-year programs is something
of a disservice to students: All the machinations you have to go through to do
use R/L/C's without introducing 'j' seems a lot worse than spending the week
or so on, "Remember that sqrt(-1) thing you learned in high school? Here's an
actual application for it! Yes, it's somewhat abstract and seemingly magical
at first, but you'll like it, trust me! And you'll find your contemporary
calculator is perfectly happy to operate using these things..."

Not that it belongs in a 2-year program, but phasors also serve as a very nice
"backdrop" to Laplace transforms... they're a lot less nebulous when you can
tell kids, "Hey, you've been using a somewhat distilled version of this for a
year or two now..."
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
RST Engineering (jw) said:
A pox learned very quickly in academia. One does not tell the professor that
(s)he put the diode in backwards or after becoming a junior professor to
openly comment that the class project design is a pile of doggiepoo without
first finding out which senior faculty member designed it.

Sure one does. I managed to stump the department head on the equation for GBW
in an op-amp circuit (I didn't know what the correct answer was, but I was
able to demonstrate that the "solution" up on the board was incorrect and the
department head agreed but also didn't know where to go from there :) ).

A better story is the one I've posted previously about a co-worker who took a
control systems lab and, after being unable to get the lab to achieve some
specified settling time was able to demonstrate that doing so was impossible
given the bandwidth limitations of the the power amplifier and op-amps
provided. Since he'd just demonstrated that hundreds of kids had dry-labed
the experiment, his story goes that the next day a half-dozen department
professors were in the lab trying to get it to work, and they concluded the
same thing my co-worker had: It couldn't be done with the equipment provided.
The lab itself had been constructed by some former grad. student!

Jim has his story about demonstrating that someone had minimized an op-amp's
sensitivity with respect to one variable while making the rest atrocious,
which is the kind of thing you'd only see in academia. I'm sure he has plenty
more too...
 
R

RST Engineering \(jw\)

Jan 1, 1970
0
I was 9 units into a MSEE program at Sac State when I had the department
chair try and convince me that his microstrip circuit on alumina 1/4 inch
thick would work. Get alumina more than 10 or 20 mils thick at 10 GHz. or
so and I don't care HOW much you wish it would work, it ain't gonna.

Haven't been back since.

Jim
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tim said:
I've been known to solder bulky items (brass connectors, etc.) with my
brazing torch (a home made propane burner in 1/2" pipe, probably
10-100kBTU/hr in normal use), and use same to heat up the soldering iron to
handle bulky joints (copper strap, pipe, etc.).

100,000BTU? Whoa! That's about 80% of what our central furnace can do
when it is running at full bore.
 
H

Homer J Simpson

Jan 1, 1970
0
He who has not repaired a piece of electronic equipment using a nail
heated over the barbeque coals for a solder iron ain't quite broken in yet
as an engineer :)

I found the fault on a tube radio once with a screwdriver and a pair of
needle nose pliers - in under 2 minutes (open WW resistor on the multiple
electro).
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
I found the fault on a tube radio once with a screwdriver and a pair of
needle nose pliers - in under 2 minutes (open WW resistor on the multiple
electro).

---
Beginner's luck?

I found the fault once, in a radio, by isolating the fault down, on
the schematic, to a 10K resistor and then licking my fingers and
bridging the resistor with those fingers. The radio started
playing, I replaced the resistor and, AFAIK, it's still out there
working like it's supposed to.
 

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