capacitor?

bknauss

I was commenting that having a vast knowledge of electrical engineering stuff does not mean you'll have real world knowledge of electrical systems and how they work, or be able to apply that knowledge in a good way. You can be a 4.0 student coming out of Cal Berkley with your BSEE, but there's a huge gap to bridge before you'll be a productive member of a company. There's simply too many things that you don't/can't go over in a class room. Most things learned in a class room or a lab are fairly theoretical. Until you are forced to go out and create even a somewhat complex system, you won't grasp how little you know.

In the case of capacitors, its a great idea... in theory. But when you don't think of things like ESR, you add in a charge up time for the cap and also that extra strain on the charging system. Or that certain types (materials) of caps are better at certain applications than others. Ceramic caps are great at filtering out high frequencies in switching power supplies, but electrolytics are pretty terrible and can make or break if the power supply works. I was spending hours in the lab at college with a built power supply not working for that simple reason. WTF, right?

Yup, that made no sense... an afternoon full of meetings has killed my brain.

MacLeod

Originally posted by bknauss
I was commenting that having a vast knowledge of electrical engineering stuff does not mean you'll have real world knowledge of electrical systems and how they work, or be able to apply that knowledge in a good way. You can be a 4.0 student coming out of Cal Berkley with your BSEE, but there's a huge gap to bridge before you'll be a productive member of a company. There's simply too many things that you don't/can't go over in a class room. Most things learned in a class room or a lab are fairly theoretical. Until you are forced to go out and create even a somewhat complex system, you won't grasp how little you know.

Im gonna stick up for Brian here. I agree 100% with this. Take truck driving school. I went for 8 weeks, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Driving and backing, shifting and backing. Youd think I was ready for the road. Well when I first got out there on my own in that 80,000 pound, 75' long monster it was a whole other story. It took me months before I was comfortable behind the wheel.

Now I know truck driving school is freaking childs play compared to Engineering school but its always the same. Cops I know tell me the same way. 16 weeks in the academy and 12 weeks ride along and when they first get out on their own they feel like a kid.

College only prepares you to discover how much you DONT know.

bknauss

macleod brings up an excellent point... its not simply engineering stuff like I was talking about, its about a ton of stuff out there. Macleod gave us the truck driving example, my girlfriend is doing something completely different from what she studied in college, etc etc.

As I've heard many times before, college is simply a process to weed out the people who can't learn well.

exalted512

i cant learn worth a ****
i just failed another chem test
im not sure what im going to do next semester...i might be going to a tech school or something
the sad part is i dont even what im doing wrong...i study, hell, i pay to go study in tutorials...
AHHHH
-Cody

LittleCar_w/12s

well you have to remove the woofers from your ears if ya want to hear anything Cody...
I'm a bit of a slacker right now. I've spent the last two years wasting my time, of course life didn't help out much, and Uncle Sam woouldn't lend me more than $6G, that bought me 1 semester at a 4yr college... The rest of what I've done is out of pocket at Com.College.
It really hurt having to cancel an entire semester of classes a year and a half ago (stolen money from bank acct, I had to work 3 jobs to pay rent...) Of course no money back from the college...

So don't feel bad Cody That cut my gpa in college in half... and emptied my wallet too. It's just life doin a number on ya, just gotta keep goin until you can't afford it.