[AR] Re: Career advice please.
- From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2021 09:05:09 -0700
On Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 6:05 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
snip
(Due to some quirks of the sequence of undergrad courses I took, I hit
theoretical chemistry before ever being exposed to complex variables --
the algebra and calculus of complex numbers -- and that was a big mistake.
I literally couldn't understand half the equations.
Something vaguely similar happened to me.
In 1960 I went to school at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Studied electrical engineering, but the first two years included other
basic engineering courses such as statics, dynamics, thermodynamics,
fluid mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This was the spring of 1961.
Professor (Manfred Ronald) Bottaccini, high in the ranks of the
Mechanical Engineering department, taught the fluids course. The
beginning Fluid Mechanics course went deep into continuity,
conservation laws, and similar considerations, i.e., mathematical
solutions from first principles. This was long before computational
fluid dynamics became a subject. The most powerful machine at the U
of A at that time was an IBM 650.
Fluid Mechanics was a big class, maybe 250 kids in it. I sat in the
front row and was following Professor Bottaccini closely, taking
detailed notes as he went through many pages of derivation. At one
point he made a volume to surface integral transformation on the
blackboard. (Or maybe it was the other way around.)
“Wait,” I spoke up. “I don’t follow that last step.”
He said, "Why this is Stokes’ Theorem, everybody knows that." He
looked around the class expecting someone to speak up. There was dead
silence. I was a semester ahead of most of them in math. If I didn’t
get it, it was not likely anyone else would.
After looking around Professor Bottaccini said, "Well in that case you
are going to have to take it on faith!" and away he went. About two
weeks later we got to Stokes’ theorem in math class.
The point of this story is to amuse, but it also tells you something
about my personality. There were over 200 kids, every one of them
just as stumped as I was, and I was the only one who spoke up.
Keith
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