How Do You Best Learn About Mechanical Stuff?

[FotoPlasma]

Originally posted by Adam Y.
How hard is it to fix cars these days? I always thought with so much technology being put into the cars that it would be very hard to fix something wrong with it.

Your comment got me thinking a bit (Yeah yeah, I know, mark the date on the calendar!) about how one goes about tinkering and hacking. According to my dad, and various other engineers (some being related to FIRST teams, some not), most people learned about electronics (among other things) by taking apart, and even fixing, things like television sets, for instance. It used to be that you could go down to a library or surplus store, and buy a copy of your television's technical manual, published by Sam's (as I'm sure many of you are familiar with their modern books). This manual would give you all of the intricate technical details of components and even the specific signals between components, and by which you could learn all sorts of great things. However, nowadays, in the age of VLSI and (dare I sayeth) ULSI, you can't just do that. It's disheartening, to some extent...

Worst of nightmares
Can a full human 'I'
Be stamped on a chip made
By VLSI.

These issues alarm me
And that's why I spoke
Not to answer all questions
But to prod and provoke

- Douglas Hofstadter
"Frederic Chopin versus EMI Chopin: Glory or Tragedy?"