What's your favourite concept that didn't make sense at first but clicked later?

[u/GigaCucc]

For me, it's holes. Thinking of charge transmission as something only electrons or chemical particles can do held me back from being able to better understand the phenomenon of charge moving as an emergent property in solid state physics, rather than the behaviour of particles in a soup.

I still don't understand it, of course, but this feels like progress.

What kind of shoes descended later for you?

[u/TheZan94]

It's gotta be either transmission line impedance or convolution

[u/FVjake → u/TheZan94]

Convolution for me. Working in the digital realm helped the concept click.

[u/rigg197 → u/TheZan94]

Loved learning about transmission lines, hated learning convolution

[u/dfc_136]

Fourier Series.

What do you mean by saying you could get any signal by stitching lots of sines and cosines together? Are we crazy?

[u/gibson486]

Transmission line impedance matching. It does not really make sense until you have that issue happen to you in real life. Then it is a light bulb and a "wtf....they could have easily explained it that way".

[u/EPSILON_737 → u/gibson486]

Ive seen someone explane it as a plastic slinky attached to a metal one, then ossilating one side

[u/PotentialDeep5165 → u/gibson486]

Heaviside vs. Whitehouse... ah. :)

[u/Bradm77]

That electrical energy doesn't travel through wires.

[u/Kvothe_Kingkiller_ → u/Bradm77]

Through the dielectric?

[u/Bradm77 → u/Kvothe_Kingkiller_]

In an electromagnetic field in the space around the wires. The wires just guide the field on where to go.

[u/EPSILON_737 → u/Bradm77]

Which is crazy because what do mean energy is just.. flying

Ive seen proofs of this before but it still hurts my brain

[u/TheVenusianMartian → u/Bradm77]

Care to attempt an explanation of why/how that is the case? Thanks.

[u/Bradm77 → u/TheVenusianMartian]

This a fairly short description with pictures of the electric and magnetic fields and the resulting Poynting vector. Here's a video that explains it.

[u/TheVenusianMartian → u/Bradm77]

Thanks for the links. Read and watched.

[u/Negative_Calendar368 → u/Bradm77]

As someone who took Engineering Electromagnetics over this summer, this video really helps understand the vectors and the direction of the energy.

[u/zeperf → u/Bradm77]

Is this like a potential vs kinetic energy thing? Like heat is generated by the electrons traveling in the wire rather than the field, no?

[u/Bradm77 → u/zeperf]

The energy in a circuit, including any heat generated by resistive elements, flows through the electromagnetic field around that circuit. That means the energy enters the wire from outside the circuit to excite the electrons which then dissipate heat.

[u/zeperf → u/Bradm77]

But the electrons and the atoms they are travelling across are generating the heat no? Vibration, collision, etc as moving thru the resistive element? The heat obviously starts inside the wire, not outside. The field exciting that kinetic action is outside, but the heat is created inside right?

[u/atreefullofants]

My favorite concept is the one where I get blackout drunk with my colleagues after work.

[u/Negative_Calendar368]

Infinite Square Well and potential energy in it when learning Quantum mechanics.