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xkcd #2904: Physics vs. Magic
(imgs.xkcd.com)
Alt text:
'At the stroke of midnight, your brother will be hurtling sideways at an altitude of 150 meters' is a regular physics prediction about your nonmagical trebuchet, whereas 'you are cursed to build a brother-launching trebuchet' falls out of the Lagrangian.
I wished they had taught us more context and concept in college EE classes. I guess super smart people figure that out on their own. It took me until several years after college before things started to click a little. I'm still working on it.
Electromagnetics still seems like dark magic to me though. I hated that class because it seems like it should have been the coolest topic ever but nothing made any sense.
Maybe they need to get dumber people teaching this stuff because at some point if you are too smart you take for granted leaps that elude some of us.
I have done teaching in a Corp setting for several years, and I find that all the questions from and confusion of students really push me to explain better, understand deeper, question some of the concepts, etc. (We teach both concept and execution)
I guess either our classes needed to ask more questions or the profs needed to work on their teaching or something.
Electromagnetics are dark magic and there is no way to teach it in any simpler terms that make it plausible without dark magic.
Even if you get all the concepts down. If you start asking "why". The only real answer is, because in 73 BC an egyptian, a roman and a greek magician met in a basement in Kathargo to perform the most heinous ritual. But since the roman guy had a lisp in saying his incantation, instead of unleashing the demons of hell onto earth, electromagnetics becamse what they are.