Ions and ion traps

[Tubejunke]

What amazes me about electronics in general is how the further we progress in "technology" it seems the further we seem to be dumbed down from the heart of the whole matter. By that I mean basic atomic theory concerning the control of electrons, ions, or what have you through resistance, capacitance, inductance, or other forms of impedance.

What I'm getting at is that we now can obtain college degrees in electronics with only a few classes based in these things, and Ohm's Law, Kirchoffs Law, and other "Laws" based on trigonometric explanations of how all these things work and can be proven to work. I make no claim to being an expert. I got a degree after many years of looking at school books from the 1930s-1960s and was frankly appalled at what we now understand or are required to understand as compared to what to me seems to have been FAR more in depth. Yet it is now written off as being archaic and/or obsolete information. I say it is the farthest thing from the truth.

Now I am not an engineer from M.I.T., so perhaps there are curriculums still that go further into these things. Perhaps they spend more than a semester working with oscilloscopes and surface component troubleshooting. Sorry, this may sound like a rant, but I felt these things as I went through my discipline worrying more about how to understand Boolean Algebra and digital logic which we were pushed through so fast working with single chips or programming robots with P-Basic computer programming that many students retained almost nothing. Especially the ones that were placed in Digital Logic courses before basic electricity.

Even what I took in high school 25 years ago started off based in math or trig AND we only had Simpson analog meters, so we could actually read scales. I blew peoples minds a few years back bringing in hard wired, tube driven chassis and analog meters and working in labs. The "hot dog" students minds were blown completely. An adjunct instructor had to have me help a student who showed up with an old Simpson V.O.M. The resistance mode would not fully deflect for "zeroing" which he found on a Google search. Some new C cells tool care of that! And this was a TRAINER of future techs.

WOW!! Anyway, neat thread on "beam bending" and it's one reason why I love this site. I think you could get more useful knowledge here than in many colleges. I know I do....