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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?

  • in reply to kmikemoo

    did it involve a synchroscope meter ? 

  • in reply to dougw

    Remember when calculators (and slide rules for that matter) came with cases with belt loops?

  • After having high school physics, 3 or 4 semesters of college physics, during an engineering statics & dynamics class, a prof looking at us one day and said " didnt anyone ever mention that another name for moment of force is torque ? "  The entire classroom lit up. Now it all made sense.   

  • The one that comes to mind was at the Army's Prime Power course when we did operations - running generators in parallel (many years ago).  I think her first name was Pam.  I can't remember her last name right now, but she was one of maybe two ladies in that career field.  Anyway, paralleling to the infinite grid (utility) is crazy simple.  Paralleling to another generator that may not be of similar size... much less so.  What you do to one impacts the other.  Sitting around the breakroom table, she explained the cause and effect in "simple terms" that turned the light bulb on for many of us.  Operating became much easier after her explanation. 

  • One surprisingly useful concept that clicked after just being mentioned in an off-hand way was dimensional analysis, where one could solve problems or at least do a sanity check on answers just by figuring out if the units of the result were correct.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • It doesn't necessarily have to be a teacher. I just recently discovered that LTspice has the same effect...