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For me it was something as trivial as a conceptual example of newtons third law, the astronaut creating momentum by tossing a wrench, that gave me an eyeopener for the subject.
What ignited your spark?
What ignited your spark?
Watching PBS's Nova in the mid 90s with my dad.
I was always interested in Electronics, like building crystal sets etc and really was astonished in my young days how math explained these electrical circuits that did these strange things like tuning is a radio station.
My father was an electrical engineer, not electronic, working on high tension power lines. I read his textbooks (very old) explaining this stuff and IMHO their explanations were atrocious. I asked Dad but he had forgotten a lot - he moved on years before to be an electrical estimator so he wasn't much help. But on the math side heard of this thing called calculus and taught it to myself about 14 - what can I say the math I was being taught at school bored the hell out of me. The book I learned it from also explained complex numbers and Euler's relation. Well I knew the the current that went through a capacitor was proportional to the differential of the voltage, with the constant of proportionality being the capacitance. So I differentiated Ce^ix and low and behold you saw immediately the 90% phase shift because you now had an i in from of it. I was astonished. Told Dad and he said - that's not the way he was taught - but he too was amazed at its simplicity - I am still amazed to this day. Got a book on electrical circuit theory to lean it even better, but started having trouble with how transistors worked and their circuits - it took me a while to understand to take the equations liberally - the current through the base and emitter determines the current thought the collector to emitter. Put a resistor on the collector and low and behold by ohms law the voltage varies with the current going going from base to emitter - it took me a year or two to cotton on to that and I read all the electronics magazines - but again to me they didn't explain it well.Cool, that was something from my youth as well... '68 onwards. My dad had no understanding of electronics ( a farmer most of his life)