On Tue, 2007-06-12 at 15:24 -0400, Chris Smolinski wrote:
> My senior year (U of MD, EE) I took a digital circuits lab class. I 
> still remember one of the labs, we had to build a simple little TTL 
> circuit interface to some memory, to work as a crude digital logic 
> analyzer. My lab partner, who was a 4.0 student, dutifully added up 
> the current requirements for all of the ICs we were using, which came 
> to a few hundred mA as I recall. Then he noticed that the 5V power 
> supply we were going to use was rated for several amps, and he said 
> we had to stop and get a different power supply, as this one was 
> going to destroy the circuit by forcing too much current through it.
> 
> I kid you not.

Oh, I believe you! :) It actually reminds me of how confused I was about
wall warts as a kid (maybe 6 or 7?).

The wall wart said something like: 9V, 600mA. With my shiny new
multimeter I could measure it and it read something like 11V. Yet every
time I tried measuring that 600mA on my meter it would blow the meters'
fuse... :)

My best "in the lab" example of this is one of my final 4th year labs we
had to put together a circuit, and a person came to me, very
intelligent, not sure about 4.0 GPA, but probably one of the best
students in the class, and asked me which end of a diode was the
cathode... 

4 years of lectures, quizzes, exams and many labs, and something as
simple as the little line on a diode was still something they didn't
know.

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