While deeply immersed in nerd stuff at MSOE it was often hard for me to know how to talk to people with non-technical backgrounds about science and engineering related stuff because I simply didnt know what level of understanding they had about basic mechanics and physics concepts. Sometimes people dont know what torque is, and other times people surprise you with things they remember from high school physics classes. Now that I am part of normal society again I dont struggle with that quite as much.
Similarly, it can be so hard to know what the basic level of understanding the average car-guy has. Most of us are so deeply immersed in this hobby that people throw around terms like "injector pulse width", "caster", and "bump-steer" and most of the time you have no problem maintaining a productive conversation. There are car guys who do car stuff for a living and have an exorbitant amount of knowledge about everything car related, and there are also guys who have just recently gotten in to cars that still dont know how a differential works.
I tucked this all away in the black hole portion of my brain and moved on with life, but it resurfaced after seeing a thread about how "you need backpressure in your exhaust" and then this on Jalopnik today:
In all honestly I remember 7 years ago when I did my manual conversion, that was the first time I had ever pulled a transmission and I had to stare at the parts for a couple minutes to understand exactly how it all actually worked. I'm no master mechanic, I still dont fully understand the spool valve and torsion bar inside a rack and pinion, among other things, but to me its hard to believe that people dont understand the physical effect certain modifications have on a car other than "it makes your car do this ______"
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While deeply immersed in nerd stuff at MSOE it was often hard for me to know how to talk to people with non-technical backgrounds about science and engineering related stuff because I simply didnt know what level of understanding they had about basic mechanics and physics concepts. Sometimes people dont know what torque is, and other times people surprise you with things they remember from high school physics classes. Now that I am part of normal society again I dont struggle with that quite as much.
Similarly, it can be so hard to know what the basic level of understanding the average car-guy has. Most of us are so deeply immersed in this hobby that people throw around terms like "injector pulse width", "caster", and "bump-steer" and most of the time you have no problem maintaining a productive conversation. There are car guys who do car stuff for a living and have an exorbitant amount of knowledge about everything car related, and there are also guys who have just recently gotten in to cars that still dont know how a differential works.
I tucked this all away in the black hole portion of my brain and moved on with life, but it resurfaced after seeing a thread about how "you need backpressure in your exhaust" and then this on Jalopnik today:
https://jalopnik.com/this-simple-animation-answers-everything-about-how-a-cl-1821706376
In all honestly I remember 7 years ago when I did my manual conversion, that was the first time I had ever pulled a transmission and I had to stare at the parts for a couple minutes to understand exactly how it all actually worked. I'm no master mechanic, I still dont fully understand the spool valve and torsion bar inside a rack and pinion, among other things, but to me its hard to believe that people dont understand the physical effect certain modifications have on a car other than "it makes your car do this ______"
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