Anyone else want to tell a story about ignorant lab TA's?

In the electronics 1 lab today, we're doing a lab with center tapped transformers and a half-wave rectifier. Mid way through the experiment we're supposed to replace the 10k load with a 100 ohm resistor to see how it reacts. Not thinking, I blindly do it and start to notice something smelling bad. Unplug everything and notice the resistor is getting hot... ok makes sense. Decrease the resistance by a factor of 100, your current is going to increase by a factor of 100. That much current through a 1/4 W resistor no good.

I point this out to the TA and he starts asking about what value of filter capacitor are we using. It doesn't matter, we're pushing too much current. He just doesn't get it. Next thing I know 3 people in the room have burned their fingers when the 100 ohm is too hot and the freaking TA can't seem to figure out why. How dumb can grad students be?

chill the fuck out, you are supposed to put that size resistor then figure out the other values, if i remember correctly

everyone in our class burned them, too. We were the last group to go, we knew what we were supposed to do, but still blew the resistor

The TA should still understand why it's happening and he doesn't. I believe that was his point.

unless the TA was trying to pull the "I'll act like I don't know what's going on even though I do" sort of meneuver so that they can learn the lesson themselves. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's possible. I mean, they don't really teach TAs how to teach so they just make their own stupid lesson mistakes.

Those labs have been in desperate need of revision for over 5 years anyway, Whether or not the lab TA knows his stuff.

I'd say 95% of the time the TA knows their stuff, just can't understand what you're asking.

Or maybe the EE dept. just blows nuts.

I don't know what you are bitching about. That is what that class is. You will probably burn up some LEDs, BJTs and FETs before the end of the semester too. Checking the capacitor size does seem a little silly to me in this application. Anyways, your electronics TA sounds better than the person I had. Kosbar told us that he wanted to fire our TA, but he had to fire the other one first and he only had one possible person to be a replacement.

What pissed me off is that he couldn't understand, even after I explained it to him, why the resistor was burning up. He either didn't understand the concept of ohms law or he doesn't know how to communicate with his students. Yes I agree that the purpose of the lab was to replace the resistor and calculate the value of the capacitor, but after we showed him that the resistors were burning up, he started asking what value of C we were using, in case somehow that was causing some huge increase in current.

When I have to write up a lab report, that he is going to grade, and I can't do the last part of the experiment because of laws of physics, he better damn well understand why that wasn't in the lab report.

Or you could put that in your lab report with a solid explanation on why it happened and the upper/lower limits for resisitive loads in your report. Or I suppose you could sensly bitch some more.

Please don't take the high road like you haven't bitched about a class or classwork before. You're an idiot. Thanks for playing.

See, I can do it too.

lololol

+1

Someone had to say it.