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Examples of fast events for normal people
Sredni:
--- Quote from: Peter Taylor on June 21, 2022, 04:53:50 pm ---The three D's of engineering. Define, Define, Define.
--- End quote ---
I thought there were six of those:
Define
Design
Develop
Deploy
Despair
Delegate or Destroy
For the OP
Make a wooden 'square wave replica' 10 cm long (or one foot long)
Then put your hands at the beginning and end of it and tell your audience: "If this was a millisecond period, in a second there would be a thousand of these replicas, and the duration of a second would be represented by a chain of these replicas 100 meters (or a thousand feet, or whatever) long. And if this was a microsecond, a second would be a 100 km long string of these replicas. If this was a nanosecond, the string of this replica fitting in the 'length of a second' would be a hundred thousand km long."
Then you can apply the televisionification of units: 100 mt is one football stadium, while 100 km is the distance between two main cities in your area or Country, and 100 thousand km is two and a half time the circumference of the Earth.
Now, show some respect for that runt search function in your oscilloscope!!!
(check the numbers, I might be off by an order of magnitude or two, no big deal)
ebastler:
--- Quote from: Sredni on June 26, 2022, 10:15:45 am ---Make a wooden 'square wave replica' 10 cm long (or one foot long)
Then put your hands at the beginning and end of it and tell your audience: "If this was a millisecond period, in a second there would be a thousand of these replicas, and the duration of a second would be represented by a chain of these replicas 100 meters (or a thousand feet, or whatever) long. And if this was a microsecond, a second would be a 100 km long string of these replicas. If this was a nanosecond, the string of this replica fitting in the 'length of a second' would be a hundred thousand km long."
--- End quote ---
I am not sure this would work for "normal" people. Switching back and forth between times and lengths to illustrate things does get a bit confusing:
Why would a time be represented by a length? Why would either be represented by a square wave? And I don't think you can take it for granted that people find the rule of three intuitive at all...
Sredni:
--- Quote from: ebastler on June 26, 2022, 11:01:32 am ---I am not sure this would work for "normal" people. Switching back and forth between times and lengths to illustrate things does get a bit confusing:
Why would a time be represented by a length?
--- End quote ---
Well, is it not already represented by a length on the screen of the oscilloscope? You count the divisions, by what you are really counting is how long the signal is represented on the screen.
The advantage of using a 10 cm wooden square wave is that it can be superposed on the same size square wave on the screen of the oscilloscope.
First you give something material, to which the audience can relate - a piece of wood they can hold in their hands. Then you draw the parallel with what they see on the scope's screen. The time scale is... in space after all.
And then you can put a 1ms period wave on the screen and repeat the concept: if I wanted to see an entire second on this timescale, the oscilloscope screen should be 100 meters wide.
--- Quote ---Why would either be represented by a square wave?
--- End quote ---
It's easier to build :-) and in my opinion it relates better to the idea of clock signal.
--- Quote ---And I don't think you can take it for granted that people find the rule of three intuitive at all...
--- End quote ---
I had to look it up what the rule of three was. I don't see the relevance with what I wrote. It's because I made three numerical examples?
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