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Did you have a teacher that sparked epiphanies?

dougw

Did you ever have a teacher who presented material in a way that led to you have an epiphany, where the concept just clicked?

  • Like realizing that the derivative of a waveform at a point is simply the slope of the waveform at that point
  • Or understanding that the integral of the waveform is simply the area under the curve
  • Or how negative feedback makes an amplifier predictable
  • Or how a dielectric affects capacitance

What concepts do we now take for granted that when you first came across them, they were magic?

Parents

  • Yes - his name was Mr Woolard, he taught maths and rugby football while I was in the sixth form studying 'A' levels. Up until then I'd been pretty dumb at maths. With his teaching lots of things suddenly clicked, such as quadratic equations and those three equations that bring speed, acceleration, and distance together. He introduced us to logarithms, sines, cosines, etc., and we were given slim volumes of log tables.

    Then the school set up a special offer for students enabling them to buy Thorntons slide rules at bargain prices. What a revelation that was! I still have mine, in it's black plastic case, and it still works. A wonderful machine that needs no batteries. And the knowledge I gained from it came in very useful when I bought a Sinclair Scientific calculator, with it's Reverse Polish notation. Sadly that no longer works even though I tried it with new batteries. The constants are still readable, I coated them with a thin layer of Conformal Coating well before they wore off on other Scientifics.

    My first 'company calculator' had lots of sliders on the front and a large cranking handle on one side. I was able to do quite complicated calculations on it. But it was a shared device, used by the whole department. And then another special offer, this time from a company called Texas. I've still got one and it still works 60 years later. Thank you Mr Woolard, you guided me into a great life. I don't know what powers it but it has never needed new batteries.

  • in reply to electronicbiker

    Ah yes the little book of log tables - to be carried everywhere. You could always tell who the engineers were because we carried slide rules.

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