More on this topic :) Another really fascinating thing for me was first year "Intro to Electricity". That course was relatively formula based; for example, the

More on this topic :) Another really fascinating thing for me was first year "Intro to Electricity". That course was relatively formula based; for example, the voltage across a capacitor is given by Vcap = V0 * (1 - e^(-t/tau)). I had a hell of a time remembering that formula, and suffered for it. In second year, we started getting more in depth and had a few more tools at our disposal (e.g. the Laplace transform, Integration, light Differential Equations, etc). At that point, the formulas i = C dv/dt and v = L di/dt became fully engrained in my head. We took those, and derived the equations we'd been using in first year. From that point on, I solved every passive circuit using precisely these first principles, and would consistently get the correct answer faster than many of my classmates who were trying to remember big specific formulas. If I needed it for some reason, I could quickly do the integral for a specific circuit to get the closed-form voltages.