On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 07:29 +0200, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
> > a few people came to me, VERY smart people,
> > asking which side of a diode was the cathode...
> 
> Probably not comparable, but I still don't remember and probably never 
> will. I know the band corresponds to the line-side in the symbol, and I 
> know which way the current flows. That's all I need.
> 
> To recall which side is the cathode I have to go through a mental 
> process: Cathode. There used to be cold-cathode tubes. So the default 
> cathode was warm. So that's where they boiled the electrons. So that was 
> the negative side. Current flows towards the electrons-side, so the 
> cathode is the band. Amazingly, I get the process right about 50% of the 
> time.

You are right, the word "cathode" isn't important here, I don't think of
"cathodes" either. The point was these students couldn't match the
schematic symbols orientation with that of the physical diode. They used
the word cathode because that's how they saw the symbol.

So, let me rephrase: I think it very disturbing that an EE in 4th year,
right about to graduate, can't match the pins of a diode with it's
schematic symbol.

TTYL

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