The most useful science class

[elizilla]

When I was in 6th grade, in Mr Taylor's class, we did a section on electricity. We hooked up simple circuits, made our own flashlights, stuff like that. It was the most fun science class ever; I considered it my favorite subject. After that, the science classes were all more serious, things like chemistry or physics or biology. It was never like playing again.

But y'know what? That section on electricity, is probably the most valuable thing I ever learned in a science class. I use that stuff all the time. Not just for motorcycles - for my house, for my computers, for just plain understanding what happens when I plug something in. Other stuff gets repeated - every year you do all the math or grammar you did last year, plus some new material. But we only did electricity, once. Never touched on it again in any class.

I've been chatting with people about hooking up electrical stuff, the last few days. I need to remember that not everyone had that fundamental education I did. Or if they did, they were struggling with some other thing in their adolescent lives, and missed it that one solitary time it came around.

Y'know, now that I'm thinking of it, there's another thing from that class that I use all the time. I learned how to look at a weather radar map and understand it. Yet another item that never came around again, in any of my school lessons.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I learned most of what I know about how to diagnose and repair cars and bikes from someone with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry.

Unfortunately, the way science is taught in many (most?) public schools in the U.S., it's a bunch of dry stuff taught out of textbooks, and you don't get into actual "laboratory science" until high school at least, and you don't get into "engineering" (i.e. "building stuff") until college, if you choose to go that route.

[khaylock]

I used to build crystal sets and little electrical widgets when I was a kid... I grew out of it, but basic analogue electronics don't scare me at all.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Between my dad, the telephone man, and high school electricity/electronics, I learned a lot of the basics and some detail. Just found my note books from that class just recently digging through the basement. I now have kit around here for fishing a telephone line through a wall--remember when wall phone would be installed without the wire coming up from the baseboard?, yep that is what dad learned. He moved up through the Michigan Bell ranks to become an intructor then an engineer as years went by.

[tomatoe333.livejournal.com]

I started out doing the basic circuits. Wires, lights, etc. I was 7 or 8 then.

I ended up with a bachelor's in Electrical Engineering. :-)