Sadly, this will be my last article for Kibbles and Bytes. I’m going to be moving on from Small Dog to the next chapter of my life. I’ve really enjoyed writing articles almost every week and hearing from readers who learned something new or just wanted to tell me more about the topic I wrote about. I feel like I often learn more new things when writing. Usually I start off with a topic in mind, maybe something that I thought about in the week prior, and then research it in more detail. I’ve certainly covered a wide range of topics from gamma radiation to air conditioning to electrical safety basics. For this last article, I thought I’d share a bit about how I’ve picked up so much of this stuff and despite not having much formal training.
The only formal course I took on electronics was an in-development course in college. It was a brand new instructor and a brand new course the college was offering that year. I struggled tremendously in it. It was heavily math and theory-focused and my calculus background has always been pretty weak. I somehow managed to eke out a B average when all was said and done. I think if the course had included more hands-on learning, I would’ve done better. My skills have always been in putting theory into practice rather than just focusing on the theory alone.
I tend to be the kind of person who will decide to build something, and then do a ton of research until I understand what is going on. I remember when I built my solar power station, I did a lot of research to understand how to size wires for loads. You wouldn’t think something like that would be complicated, but actually, there’s a lot of theory behind it. What kind of amperage is involved? What will the voltage be? How long are the wires going to be? There are plenty of resources out there on the internet to help you on your way to learning about these things. I’m a firm believer that anyone with the desire can understand how all of this stuff works.
With electricity, there are always safety concerns. If you’re not confident about something, it’s ok to admit it. Remember that if the resistance is right, and there’s enough charge behind it, virtually any voltage can be lethal. Under most normal conditions, voltages below 48V are fairly safe. If you recall, my very first articles here about electricity basics focused on the safety factor and what was and wasn’t dangerous. If you’re looking to get involved in a project, 12 and 24 volt systems are generally pretty safe (shorts can still cause fires though). They can be a great way to work on gaining a better understanding of how electricity works. They also translate to useful projects. Most cars, for example, have 12 volt electrical systems, so if you’re comfortable working with that, there are lots of things you might be able to do.
Finally, you can always just read about the history of inventions and developments in the world of electromagnetism. Amps, volts, ohms…all of these terms are named after people. Reading about how they discovered what they did can really help to shed light on why we do things a certain way now, or how certain modern devices came to be. It can be incredibly fascinating to learn about the processes and experiments early scientists used to discover the fundamentals of electricity and it’s a great way to get yourself into the same mindset of learning.
Electromagnetism, at least the fundamentals of it, are what an old professor of mine would call “pure truth.” He was a professor of mathematics and computer science and he always told us that the things he was teaching us were pure truth. These things were true from billions of years before we were born, and they’d be true billions of years into the future and beyond. I always liked that. My hope in writing all the articles I’ve written is that some of you might have become more interested in some of those pure truths. Take care, and always keep learning.