When I was a kid I played a lot, and I mean a lot, of Super Mario Bros. My grandpa once asked me to explain the game to him after he’d watched me play it for the nine thousandth hour. I tried hard and couldn’t do it. There’s a lot that defies intuition. Like how you can jump many times your height, as if you’re a bug.
People had been playing electric guitar for decades before Jimi Hendrix. Mostly it had been used as a louder, less effortful version of the acoustic guitar. Jimi was one of the first to think of the guitar amp as a musical instrument unto itself, an early analog synth, with the guitar as a very sophisticated control surface.
There’s an episode of Family Guy where they go to the science museum, and under a banner reading ‘The Miracle Of Electricity’ is an old man turning an ordinary household lamp on and off. When he sees the crowd staring at him, he says, “What? You don’t think this is a miracle? When I saw this at the aught-six World’s Fair, I almost crapped my pants!” I completely agree. Honestly, all I want to know is how the TV works. Or how light bulbs work. Or how the computer I’m typing this on works. Or how the subway train I’m riding works. I feel uncomfortable about the yawning gap between my dependency on electricity and my knowledge of it.
I’ve had opportunities my whole life to learn. I did the thing as a kid where you wire a christmas tree bulb to a nine-volt battery. I went to very good schools, where I learned the Maxwell equations and the basics of quantum electrodynamics. I continue to read books, talk to my friends in the science world, play with interactive web pages, and generally scour the memosphere for information on the subject. After all this effort, I don’t feel like I’m getting any closer. What I’m starting to suspect is that nobody really understands electricity at the gut level. (more…)