Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by supertroop 30 days ago
You could have just said yes.
1 comments

That wouldn't have contributed much to the discussion. Electrical insights often come from analogies. It's easier for most people to understand time derivatives in the context of an accelerating car than it is to understand them in the context of a capacitor or inductor charging.

Another cool insight is around "dual" relationships in circuits. You can often think of some components as roughly analogous to each other, with a switch of current and voltage. For example, if you connect a capacitor in parallel with a power supply and load, the voltage across it will increase as a function of time until it reaches the power supply voltage. Similarly, if you connect an inductor in series with a power supply and load, the current through it will increase as a function of time until it reaches the current that would otherwise pass through the load.

Like most good analogies, it's not 100% airtight, but it provides useful insights.