Electronics > Beginners

When you follow the schematic but it doesn't work

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Alex Nikitin:
As far as I remember (and I've started to be interested in electronics when I was about 14) I've never built a circuit without understanding first how it works. I don't remember ever trying to build something from a circuit in a book or in a magazine without a thorough analysis which did always end up with me building my own circuits around somebody else's ideas. I've started with a simple multimeter and a soldering iron, several books on electronic devices (mostly data sheets for valves, transistors, resistors, capacitors and so on) and gradually built my own lab - a power supply, an oscilloscope, a function generator, an AC millivoltmeter - by the time I was 18.

I see no fun whatsoever in trying to build something you don't understand  :palm: .

Cheers

Alex

TK:

--- Quote from: blueskull on July 25, 2018, 09:54:20 am ---
--- Quote from: bd139 on July 25, 2018, 09:33:03 am ---Yes out of textbooks and as advised by the lecturers. It's almost as if they'd never built the things  :palm:

--- End quote ---

You will be surprised how many university professors have absolutely no idea on fields that he/she is not exactly working on (we are ARWU ECE subject ranked top 10 worldwide).

I once had a professor, teaching communication protocols, who has no idea what's differential signal and how it increases bandwidth. She only knows RS485 is faster than RS232, but has no idea why.

And I also had a professor, despite living in US for 2 decades, has no idea about American slang and English memes. She likes to eat salmon, and every time she pronounces like she likes to eat semen. And she always says she likes to "blow", of course it's something else.

Actually in our department, it's hard to find a computer engineering/network engineering professor who can read schematics, and a few EE professors who can code properly (not just grabbing crap from CodeProject or Arduino forum).

And I kid you not, we have DSP topic PhD students working on the latest imaging processing technology that has no idea how to compute a 2N point real FFT with an N point complex FFT.

Again, we have power electronics major PhD students who absolutely master control theory, but has no idea how to actually drive a MOSFET or how to design a current shunt amplifier.

And yes, we do have people who don't know ground clips are always tied together, as we did have expensive firework shows. And we do have people who can't f*ing solder.

Welcome to 2018, where everyone knows nothing at all about fields outside his/her exact field.

--- End quote ---
You are quoting one extreme of the spectrum.  I am sure there are some amazing professors on the other extreme and a bunch of average in between.  Look for the world changing extreme, not the mediocre one.

b_force:

--- Quote from: Alex Nikitin on July 25, 2018, 11:41:38 am ---As far as I remember (and I've started to be interested in electronics when I was about 14) I've never built a circuit without understanding first how it works. I don't remember ever trying to build something from a circuit in a book or in a magazine without a thorough analysis which did always end up with me building my own circuits around somebody else's ideas. I've started with a simple multimeter and a soldering iron, several books on electronic devices (mostly data sheets for valves, transistors, resistors, capacitors and so on) and gradually built my own lab - a power supply, an oscilloscope, a function generator, an AC millivoltmeter - by the time I was 18.

I see no fun whatsoever in trying to build something you don't understand  :palm: .

Cheers

Alex

--- End quote ---
Lol, that's a very interesting thought.
It really depends how someones brain works.
Some people prefer understanding every single little fart before they start.
Other people learn as they go.
(and some people can't be really bothered)

Neither of the two is good or wrong and it both has its pitfalls.

Richard Crowley:
One of my favorite corollaries of Murphy's Law is:

"Amplifiers will oscillate.  Oscillators won't."

I have experienced this myself on several occasions.   :palm:

And of course there is the old observation of the professors high up in their ivory towers who don't know which end of a soldering iron to hold.

b_force:

--- Quote from: blueskull on July 25, 2018, 09:54:20 am ---
--- Quote from: bd139 on July 25, 2018, 09:33:03 am ---Yes out of textbooks and as advised by the lecturers. It's almost as if they'd never built the things  :palm:

--- End quote ---

You will be surprised how many university professors have absolutely no idea on fields that he/she is not exactly working on (we are ARWU ECE subject ranked top 10 worldwide).

I once had a professor, teaching communication protocols, who has no idea what's differential signal and how it increases bandwidth. She only knows RS485 is faster than RS232, but has no idea why.

And I also had a professor, despite living in US for 2 decades, has no idea about American slang and English memes. She likes to eat salmon, and every time she pronounces like she likes to eat semen. And she always says she likes to "blow", of course it's something else.

Actually in our department, it's hard to find a computer engineering/network engineering professor who can read schematics, and a few EE professors who can code properly (not just grabbing crap from CodeProject or Arduino forum).

And I kid you not, we have DSP topic PhD students working on the latest imaging processing technology that has no idea how to compute a 2N point real FFT with an N point complex FFT.

Again, we have power electronics major PhD students who absolutely master control theory, but has no idea how to actually drive a MOSFET or how to design a current shunt amplifier.

And yes, we do have people who don't know ground clips are always tied together, as we did have expensive firework shows. And we do have people who can't f*ing solder.

Welcome to 2018, where everyone knows nothing at all about fields outside his/her exact field.

--- End quote ---
Can I vote you for president for almost every single school or university in the world?

When I was working for a company this drove us absolutely nuts.
Getting students or interns who can actually DO and KNOW something.
My boss at the time put it very well, "They train people to be very good and efficient in learning and making exams, not in broadening their views and understand the world around them"

What makes this story a little ironic and difficult is that there are quite some companies out there still judging someone by his level of graduation.
So even people who have an impressive CV are just being ignored when not having a certain formal level criteria.
Talking about wasting talent........

 

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