Wires Anyone?

Back in the good ol' days (okay, fine, high school wasn't that good but the electronics lab was), we had a beautiful work station. It had an oscilloscope right in front of us, wire cutters and strippers for everyone, components sorted into little boxes that were labeled, and lots of wire.

Nowadays, in the lab we work in for my electronics class (which is a great class besides the quality of the lab), there is one board per person that can do some pretty cool things. It has a section with switches to be used as inputs and a separate section with 9 LEDs for outputs. But there's no oscilloscope (not even a voltmeter) and the wires are pre-cut into two lengths.

Although I have kept in contact with my electronics teacher from high school, I refuse to send him a picture of any circuit I've built here. I believe that a page of math can be pretty in its own way. Likewise, a well made circuit can have its own beauty. People come by, see how each wire is carefully cut to fit the exact distance it needs to go and lay right against the circuit board, and are amazed at the effort put into the circuit. Here, my circuits are ugly. The wires, as a result of being pre-cut, tend to loop around and get tangled with each other. Some wires are two short and I have to daisy-chain them.

You might ask, well, you have to have learned something from this experience, right? Correct. I've learned that being able to cut your wires results in a much nicer circuit that is easier to de-bug. I've learned that some people (*cough* cs people taking an electronics lab class *cough*) haven't had experience with actual wires and thus don't understand how the holes on the breadboard and the wires relate to the lines they draw on their circuit-planning software. I've learned that hands-on experience is indeed valuable and that we should have more of it. Finally, I've learned that it's going to be harder to find good hands-on experience in classes here.

Looking at all those new realizations, I have to conclude that (amazingly) some teachers were right about the need to look for design teams and other ways to get real experience outside the classroom. Of course, I still think the labs that parallel the class should just be made better so these experiences are easier to get. After all, how much does wire cost?