I have been studying electricity as a hobby, using a highschool textbook, partially documented here. I am trying to leave no stone unturned, meaning that I’m trying to understand any and all concepts and terminology that the book presents. I am now reading about generators and how they produce AC. The chapter also explains how the voltage can at any time/point in the cycle be calculated using sinus. While I understand the gist of it, I don’t understand the math behind it, because I simply suck at math. I almost failed math in highschool… I’m fairly confident I could go on without understanding the math behind why and how the voltage cycles between polarities, but my somewhat neurodiverse brain simply won’t let me. I want to, nay, I need to understand it.
So, should I:
- grab a highschool math book and start from scratch until I reach the chapter on sinus?
- only read up on sinus and whatever knowledge turns out to be a prerequisite to understand it (with a risk of cascading backwards…)?
- other recommendations?
This is not a question about how generators work and I am not asking you to explain sinus to me here. I am asking for advise on how to (re)learn math at my age of 30+. I can invest about six hours per weekend. I am eager to learn! Please advise! 😊
You must log in or register to comment.
RESPECT
By pure happenstance, I happened to take this earlier this year in preparation for a promotion.
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/trigonometry
It’s learn as you go, at your own pace. If you ever feel stuck, they also have other math lessons so you can get back up to speed.
The other resource I recommend is this YouTube channel. He’s got a bunch of great videos, but I like this recent one he did https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EElZjxhQxHs
At the time of writing: 3 different replies, all different, all good. It depends on how your brain works, unfortunately!
For elementary math concepts, middle school books explain stuff in a variety of different ways. So you can shop around for that. I inherited a math book from my father and it was enlightening! It explains concepts I already knew in different ways and suddenly the connections between them and others were so clear to me.
Specifically for sinus, what you are looking for is a section of trigonometry. You are lucky in the sense that it’s a fairly “independent” set of concepts, so you can jump in without too much background. Personally, I would advise getting a college level trigonometry book and read the first chapter. If that doesn’t work, going to high school level and different ways of presenting the topic.
Thanks! Good to know that I have the option to jump into trigonometry without concerning myself about other concepts. And what a beautiful thing, to inherit a book from your father! <3
I’ve personally had success by diversifying the learning process as much as possible. Read the book chapter on the subject you want to learn. Then find a few different YouTube videos on the subject. Then read a different book, or a Wikipedia article, or whatever media you can find. Don’t try to understand a complex topic in one shot, from one source. Let the understanding develop slowly and naturally.
Then we have some things in common! 😊 I also try to diversify the input and output type/medium: reading (seeing), listening, speaking (here, talking about it) and writing. I’m going to try to incorporate math into my everyday life, starting with annoying the heck out of my colleagues who seem to have an aversion to the natural sciences. Pff. 🤣
Read the Wikipedia article on sine and cosine and work backwards from there. At the high school level, the “elementary understanding” section is usually as far as they go. Understanding the math behind electricity is at an electrical engineering/university level and it’s going to be counterproductive to go down that rabbit hole when trying to learn fundamentals.
Short version: Start at whatever math level you feel you can do confidently, grab that textbook, and work up from there. I highly recommend the Singapore method - there is a reason Singapore leads the world in math scores.
Long version: I actually never grasped math at all in school due to a combination of undiagnosed dyscalculia/bad math teaching in elementary and teachers who would get frustrated and do it for me on tests in middle/high school. I could memorize steps long enough to fake my way through a unit, but I had NO grasp of the actual material. (I did great in geometry because proofs required explaining why you get a result, not just “do these steps.”)
So in my 40s, crying over basic conversions on the amateur radio exam, I actually bought myself a set of elementary math textbooks and started from counting and number relationships (pairs of numbers that make 10 for example).
IT CHANGED MY LIFE. And algebra onward was easy because I finally learned to understand the relationships, not just memorize steps.
So yeah. Start with the math you know and look for books/materials that clarify how you get certain results and not just what steps to plug in. Make it interesting to you. Is my two cents.
