When I got to a fancy school where they build satellites, I thought for sure my soldering iron skills would be useful for doing all the fancy stuff.
But no! The satellites were built by a team of highly skilled ladies who looked completely down on the amateurish skills of us wannabes. And I include in the wannabes, the professor who had a Nobel prize! My skills putting together circuits from handbooks for real experiments were put to good use. Knowing how to use a scope and to not put the ammeter in parallel with the power supply, was very useful. But no way was I as good as the ladies who actually built the satellites. Tim N3QE On Saturday, November 14, 2015, Ray Xu <rayxu...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi guys, > > Your mostly-lurking EE (and, recently, also physics) undergraduate student > here. > > You guys make me feel nostalgic for my young age of > almost-legal-to-drink-in-the-US! > > I wish I can reply to all of you one by one but I'd rather not clog the > mailing list with more off-topic discussion. (Feel free to email me > off-list) > > I just have to say I have a deep appreciation for the previous generation > of electronics and technology and engineers (you guys). I personally feel > like I've been born into the wrong generation, or at least "conflicted" > between the two generations of electronics. I still enjoy hands-on > DIY-building, soldering, dead-bug style prototyping, and etc at home but it > definitely is starting to become obsolete and antiquated. On the other > hand, I also enjoy working in research labs with the cutting-edge. In the > former, time slows down and its just a matter of mostly applying > knowledge. In the latter, time passes by quickly and its all about > intellectual growth. > > When I was younger, I frequently interacted with engineers that used to be > involved in the defense industry during the Cold War/Viet/Korean War era. > They are now mostly retired. They were my main source of knowledge, and as > a consequence, I grew up learning analog electronics by actual > breadboarding, hand-soldering, playing with oscilloscopes, and reading The > Art Of Electronics during my free time. It wasn't until relatively > recently I started using LTSpice. I have never touched an Arduino or > Raspberry Pi and I probably never want to*; I learned microcontrollers on > my own using the PIC platform and in a few of my courses on the ARM and > "LC3" platform. Perhaps the biggest contributor towards my passion and > desire to learn about electronics is my family. My father bought me a > brand new Tek oscilloscope during ~7th grade and made it clear to me that > he will spend money for my hobby if it meant I will have the opportunity to > learn. (This was significant, because from where I grew up, the Asian > parents were stereotypically notorious for being frugal and only cared what > their son's/daughter's GPA and test scores were) > > In the research (the "cutting-edge") world, I actually find my past and DIY > experience useful in gaining an intuitive understanding of a problem or > design challenge at hand. > > In the classroom, I heavily agree that most of my peers need more hands-on > experience. Seriously, some people still can't explain why knowing the > power dissipation of a resistor is important. Or how much current is > flowing through a pull-low or pull-high bias resistor. Or what happens > when you have a simple RC circuit (without having to write a transfer > function). It's kind of disturbing. Maybe after I've obtained my PhD, I'd > like to propose serious changes to the undergraduate EE curriculum of my > university. > > Keep it up guys. If any of you are in the Austin, TX or Dallas, TX area, I > am willing to meet up in person. > > > > On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:14 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist < > rich...@karlquist.com <javascript:;>> wrote: > > > > > > > On 11/12/2015 1:01 PM, William Schrempp wrote: > > > >> > >> has failed. I hear old machinists complaining about new machinists who > >> can't > >> drill a hole if the drill-press isn't computer-controlled. And in my > work, > >> nurse education, I see students who can't be bothered to learn how to > >> take a > >> manual blood-pressure, because a machine can now do it (sort of). Much > to > >> ponder here. . . . > >> > > > > Bill Schrempp > >> > >> > > This reminds me of a summer job I had as a lab assistant between my > > freshman and sophomore years at college. There were a couple of > > journeyman machinists with Bridgeport mills. They didn't let me > > use them, but they did patiently teach me how to use the drill > > press, taps, hacksaw, etc to make simple parts that didn't require > > their skills. They told me that, in Germany, a kid training to be > > a machinist would start out by being given a file, a pair of calipers, > > and a rough block of metal. His task was to make a perfect cube with > > sides of exactly 1 cm by 1 cm. Only after mastering that, would > > he be allowed to move onto more advanced equipment. Fortunately, the > > machinists just told me this story to scare me, but they didn't make me > > file a perfect cube. They did tell me I needed to learn to drill holes > > with 0.005 inch accuracy using a machinist's scale and a center > > punch to lay them out. > > > > Rick > > > > _______________________________________________ > > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com <javascript:;> > > To unsubscribe, go to > > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > > and follow the instructions there. > > > > > > -- > -- > __________ > Ray Xu > http://www.utdallas.edu/~rxx110130 > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com <javascript:;> > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.