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Re: Simulation vs. Experimentation (was: Capacitor Help)



Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Tesla list wrote:

Original poster: Mddeming@xxxxxxx
In a message dated 12/16/05 11:30:44 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
"  I
can't see any reason for a beginner to use anything more than
Wheeler's and Medhurst's approximations and a pencil and paper for an
initial design of a beginner's system. "


Hi Ed,

I agree that's all that one really needs and has needed for decades, and older newbies can appreciate it. However, I think you'll find that many of the under 30 crowd couldn't work out anything with a pencil and paper except maybe a booger from their nose. :^~(( I worked with pipeline flow simulators for the last 9 years before retirement. When I left, I was the only one in the department who could calculate pressure drop or orifice meter flow from basic formulas. My youngest grandson (age 8) is in the top 10% of his class, a master of web surfing, and champ at video games, but still counts on his fingers when he doesn't have a calculator, and can't read without moving his lips. If you understand what a program is doing and why, then it is a tool of great convenience, but I'm not sure how building something by carefully following the specs spit out from a program is any different from just putting together a kit, or doing a "paint-by-number picture". Maybe for many people, that's enough though.

Matt D.
I'm very much in agreement with that last point (and maybe also of the general illiteracy of the "under 30" crowd although I've has some older engineers working for me who really couldn't read, write, or spell very well and also very sharp guys in their early 20's) . I've seen lots of examples where someone did analysis using a canned program with which he wasn't familiar (and maybe couldn't understand anyway) to come up with absolutely nonsensical answers and then then defend them vigorously because "that's what the computer said" and because he had no physical feel for what the answer should be. GIGO

Ed