8 Nov
2001
8 Nov
'01
1:53 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
To which you should have responded:
Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Viloet Gave Willingly
My apologies to all women, but that little phrase is the best way to remember
the resister code: BBROYGBVGW
As in: black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray, white
Eric
I can do a lot
of things faster on a slide rule than an electronic
calculator.
A few years ago (but long after electronic calculators were common), a
student asked me for help calculating the resistor values in a potential
divider. I asked him for a calculator, and he, intending to confuse me,
handed me a slide rule
(Lesson 1 : Don't try to confuse me with old calculating devices. It
won't work!).
I then showed him how the slide rule was actually _more_ use for this
problem than a calculator. I just set the ratio of the resistors on it
(it was something simple like 1:2.5) and then slid the cursor along
looking for places where prefered valuse of resistors were almost lined
up. The closer they were, the better the choice. It took a few seconds to
find a pair of resistors that were close enough to work.
(Lesson 2 : Because a device is old, and has been replaced for many
applications doesn't mean that the device is useless for all applications)
I now want a slide rule with at least the E24 series marked as dots on
the scales. It would be very useful for this sort of problem.
-tony