Radiation (was: <Silly>: Help with question about web page

This has never helped me... In fact on several occasions the 'simplified version' has caused me more confusion. One classic example is the operation of telephone exchanges. I am interested in such devices (not for Phreaking, of course, but just becasue they're complicated electromechanical systems). I read several of the 'how it works' type books and got nowhere. In fact I was coming to the conclusion that the telephone exchange was too complicated for me to underatand. Then I got a wonderful two-volume set called 'Telephony'. It contains complete schematics of real (albeit small) exchanges, and explains what each relay does, when it pulls in, when it releases, etc. It all made perfect sense then, and I understood it. Sure the 1000 pages or so are heavt going, but it was worth it. Reading the simpler books did me no good at all, and I fail to see how anyone would beenfit from them. To get back to schools, I am not moaning about, say, teaching Newtonian mechanics. I know it's incomplete, and doesn't describe how the universe hehaves (actually, I suspect that relativistic quantum mechanics is not a complete description either). But Newtonian mechanics is understandable, it is self-consistent (it just doesn't 'agree' with the real world), and it's a perfectly adequate model for normal-sized objects moving at normal speeds. If I was going to analyse the behaviour of, say, an RK05 head positioner (to keep this on-topic), then I would use Newtonian mechanics, and would expect the results to agree to the accuracy I could measure things. No, I am complaing about things like : 'A compariston is not a measurement' (said to me when I wanted to use a bridge circuit to measure capacitance). Actually, I'd like to see a definition of measurement that doesn't involve comparison to a standard. 'A potentiometer-wire voltmeter is better than a DMM because the former draws no curret at balance'. This is more subtle. While it's true that a potentiometer-wire voltmeter dwraws no curret at balance, you can never know it's exactly at balance. You are limited by the sensitivity of the detector you're using. And when that detector is a moving coil/pointer (not a mirror) type of meter with a sensitivity of, perhaps, 1uA if you're lucky, then a 10M ohm DMM actually takes less current from, say, a Weston standard cell. My experience suggests that people are naturally curious about things, but that schools are designed to remove that curiosity. Fortunately it didn't work in my case :-). I learnt almost nothing at school -- everything I now use I taught myself (thankfully, from books that were a lot more advanced than th eaverage school textbook). -tony