Finding the problem
During my short careere life as a mathematics teacher I learned something important. Sometimes you do not need to understand what is going on. Just find the way to trace the problem from start to finish. That same idea holds true in real life. I have been watching a man repair large machines. And no, I have little urge to become a mechanic. But I do want to understand the process. Almost everything that men constructs can be deconstructed. Taken apart and then put back together. Looking at you those alarm clocks from when I was very young. In the case of these videos the repairs to a large machine include trying to trace the path of a problem. If it will not start look to the starter. If there is no power look to your power source. And if the machine runs just a little bit try to see how far you can go before you run out of ideas. The narrator in the videos does this as a career. He has a lot of good tricks for finding where things stop working. And in reality that is all I want to know about. How do you tell if something is actually broken. I have determined that vocabulary is important. If someone is describing a system it helps to know what the big words actually mean. I do not need to stand in front of an old motor to get a sense of what he is trying to do. At least that is my belief. So far all of his strategies seem to be accurate. The proof is when an old motor comes back to life and he drives the machine around the yard. Remember I have no plan of becoming a heavy machine mechanic but I do want to understand the process. My thanks to the Internet for providing hours of content that I can re watch on my schedule. And if I’m ever put in the position of trying to keep something running I will have learned that finding someone who understands the system makes the job a lot more palatable. Keep your fingers cleaner. Stops you from getting burned by touching the wrong spot. All useful techniques.
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