[SOLVED] Why basic concepts of electricity are so complicated

Ratch said:

To the ineffable All,

Electrical science has embraced a few quirks and misnomers that should have been corrected a long time ago. I will list a couple of them below.

1) Ohm's Law is NOT R =V/I . That formula is the definition of resistance. A definition is not a law. The true meaning of Ohm's Law pertains to the linear resistance of a piece of material during voltage changes. A copper wire follows Ohm's Law. A junction diode does not. I can provide documentation for my assertion if anyone wishes.

2) The phrase "current flow" literally means "charge flow flow", which is redundant and ridiculous. At the very least it is poor English. Yet it is frequently spoken by those who should know better. Instead one should just say "current", or "current exists", or "current is present" , whichever is appropriate

Ground has become synonymous with a circuit voltage reference point. Naturally we want our houses and electrical machinery to be at the same potential as the earth we stand on, so we "ground" them.

Ratch

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”Hopelessly Pedantic” is not a virtue, you know.

barry said:

”Hopelessly Pedantic” is not a virtue, you know.

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It is meant to be a friendly warning, not something to look forward to. Ratch

KlausST said:

But the inital question was: Why it is that complicated?
It is not "artificially" made complicated. It follows the rules of physics. One can not ignore them.

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If you look back at classical electrical engineering,
there were many times a much simpler / intuitive
explanation for many things. But academics can
never be satisfied with practical simplicity; in fact
it repels them as they must publish new material.
I saw this big time in semiconductors. And I'm sure
it's true in other fields. If you are being educated
by a professor, expect a math-heavy and complex
explanation. But your ham radio technician neighbor
probably has a pretty-much-good-enough one too,
that is more to-the-point and easier to grasp (and
likely uses easier measurements using simpler
cheaper equipment because that's what they had).

If you start with the classics, and then wade into
modern theories and methods as you need to,
you may find a better understanding (forest,
trees).

dick_freebird said:

If you look back at classical electrical engineering,
there were many times a much simpler / intuitive
explanation for many things. But academics can
never be satisfied with practical simplicity; in fact
it repels them as they must publish new material.
I saw this big time in semiconductors. And I'm sure
it's true in other fields. If you are being educated
by a professor, expect a math-heavy and complex
explanation. But your ham radio technician neighbor
probably has a pretty-much-good-enough one too,
that is more to-the-point and easier to grasp (and
likely uses easier measurements using simpler
cheaper equipment because that's what they had).

If you start with the classics, and then wade into
modern theories and methods as you need to,
you may find a better understanding (forest,
trees).

Click to expand...

I don't understand what you are getting at. Learning can become difficult because:

1) Irrelevant material is presented.
2) The material is not explained adequately.
3) The "facts" are just plain wrong.
4) Important points are is not emphasized enough.
5) The instructor does not see the student's point of view.

Any comments?

Ratch

Early experimenters (many are well-known years later) encountered basic behavior of electricity. They developed theories to explain it. We built on the theories, the formulae, the principles. With spurts and jumps we added to this partial knowledge. As much as we learn in school, from books, from teachers, from our own experience...

The knowledge is sufficient for normal purposes as far as letting us build a civilization. Nevertheless there is still much we are unable to explain about electricity and related phenomena, as we've discovered they interact yet we don't know why they interact. Electricity links to magnetism, forces of magnetic attraction and repulsion, radio, static charge, nuclear physics...

To teach from a proper understanding, we should (ideally) be able to harmonize all these branches of science. However it can't be done yet. So much is still hidden from us. We can tell a child to wind wire around a nail, hook it up to a battery, then pick up paper clips with the electromagnet. But we don't know why it works to do that.

We try to describe what we know by phrasing it in imperfect terminology. Unavoidably our terminology can be misinterpreted.

In reality we use electricity in our daily lives, applying theory yet we find theory only takes us so far, and we need to know a few things about real-life components, tempering theory with practicality.