I'm a physicist. When I was in school, a year of electronics was typically required for an undergrad physics degree. The capstone project at my college was buil

I'm a physicist. When I was in school, a year of electronics was typically required for an undergrad physics degree. The capstone project at my college was building a 4-bit minicomputer from gates. There were two reasons for this tradition. First, physicists are often called upon to act as multi-disciplinary problem solvers. Second, experimental physics is almost exclusively electronic and computerized. Things like data acquisition boards for personal computers were only beginning to be commercialized, and a lot of us rolled our own gear.