4 ms·

In my third semester of Calculus class, I had a Physics professor. True to his background, he would sometimes take the entire class elaborately explaining the

by arafa 11y ago

In my third semester of Calculus class, I had a Physics professor. True to his background, he would sometimes take the entire class elaborately explaining the geometric interpretation of complex 3D operations, something I greatly appreciated. The formal notation and theory was always there, but he made sure the intuition was there also (if possible). Best math teacher I've ever had.

tonyarkles 11y ago
I had a slightly weird schedule, and didn't end up taking E&M until way after I had finished all four semesters of Calculus. I walked out of the Calculus series being able to turn the crank quite well, but I didn't have a very good feel for what it meant. E&M made all the difference!
TeMPOraL 11y ago
In high school our physics professor (and an actual physics PhD) decided that he can't teach us "real physics" without derivatives and integrals (the latter not being in high school curriculum at all), so by the end of the first year, he taught as both. Our maths teacher started tearing her hair out over this, complaining about lack of rigour; eventually she gave up and taught us integrals with full mathematical formality. Having those two takes on the topic helped us understand it really well. Another science class anecdote - first year electronic engineering, the professor is showing us the derivation of transistor gain formula. He started from pretty much first principles, written out a huge formula, and then started to cross things out - "this in practice is close to 1 so we can ignore it", "in standard operating conditions this is pretty much zero" (and poof, half of the equation gone, multiplied by zero) - and kept going until he arrived at the standard I_c = βI_b. It gave me a new appreciation of just how much engineering is basically handwaving parts of reality away.

4 ms·

In my third semester of Calculus class, I had a Physics professor. True to his background, he would sometimes take the entire class elaborately explaining the

by arafa 11y ago

tonyarkles 11y ago
I had a slightly weird schedule, and didn't end up taking E&M until way after I had finished all four semesters of Calculus. I walked out of the Calculus series being able to turn the crank quite well, but I didn't have a very good feel for what it meant. E&M made all the difference!
TeMPOraL 11y ago
In high school our physics professor (and an actual physics PhD) decided that he can't teach us "real physics" without derivatives and integrals (the latter not being in high school curriculum at all), so by the end of the first year, he taught as both. Our maths teacher started tearing her hair out over this, complaining about lack of rigour; eventually she gave up and taught us integrals with full mathematical formality. Having those two takes on the topic helped us understand it really well. Another science class anecdote - first year electronic engineering, the professor is showing us the derivation of transistor gain formula. He started from pretty much first principles, written out a huge formula, and then started to cross things out - "this in practice is close to 1 so we can ignore it", "in standard operating conditions this is pretty much zero" (and poof, half of the equation gone, multiplied by zero) - and kept going until he arrived at the standard I_c = βI_b. It gave me a new appreciation of just how much engineering is basically handwaving parts of reality away.