Calculas, Soldering and Electrical Engineering

[Jim Patchell]

Tom Priore wrote:

> I've been following the posts on calcual, and the lack of teaching soldering
> in school. Here's my take.
>
> 1. you need calculas.
> 2. a math department will never teach you any good real world examples of
> why you need calculas.

    When I was in college, I was taking a complex variables (required) from the
engineering department.  It was not an easy class, so I thought, hey, my good
buddy Ivan is a grad student in the math department, bet he could help me.  I
showed him the one problem that was giving me trouble and he stared and said,
"Wow, your doing some pretty hevey duty s#!t here."  Then I found out he had no
idea how to approach the probem.  He could prove to me that it was not posible
to comb the hair on a billiard ball without a part, but integrals in the S
plane, nope (actually I have no idea any longer what the problem was I was
having.  I looked at my complex variables book not long ago and was impressed
that I ever did that stuff).

>
> 4. Soldering is a very very very very very small part of electrical
> engineering. i agree that it is important that a engineer must know his way
> around tools, but, if i'm a dsp engineer doing signal analisys on matlab, a
> soldering iron is pretty useless. very few EE go on to do basic circuit
> design. not every ee is going to graduate and build circuits. those who do
> want to do that will learn to use a soldering iron.
> which brings me to 5:

    We actually had to build circuits with soldering irons and such when I went
to school (UCSB 73-76).  However, they lab guys basically pointed to where the
tools were and said, go at it.  A lot of the people were lost as they had never
seen a soldering iron before (and it showed).  Guess I was lucky, I had been
doing electronic DIY since I was 12.

>
> 5. you will learn what you want to learn. if your an EE and you feel you
> school doent teach you what you want to learn, teach yourself. after
> spending 4 years learning to be an EE, I have learned that school doesn't
> teach you what you need to know, it gives you the tools to allow you to
> teach yourself what you need to know. of all the thing you could do with an
> ee degree, it is impossible for a universty to teach you everything about
> electrical engineering.
>
> Tom

    -Jim