Contemporaries praise Amdahl’s effort to reduce electricity to its most simple dimensions and allegorical illustration. His peers offer the greatest recommendation: “We all feel somewhat dumb when it comes to electronics… a proper tonic for this ignorance… is a major breakthrough in teaching the elementary physics of electricity… should be required basic reading for high school science students…even a blockhead like me, who could never visualize the abstract, was able to penetrate the nebulous mists of amps, volts, current, induction, and conductors, and actually understand what the hell they’re all about. But above and beyond the practical, Amdahl, with a magical energy all his own, has created a wonderful book about a beautiful and powerful mystery. Actually, this book is about electricity and everything else, too.
Amdahl introduces reality with an admmonishion to people who honestly believe they understand electricity — but can no more explain the inner workings of electrical phenomenon than they can breathe life into a crescent wrench. This dire prediction opens a more modest pathway for students who might be intimidated but desirous of filling the gaps in particle science. Even now, after years of study and silent debate, we read of emerging theory for ‘The Ultimate Particle’ — with offered dimensions — basic to understanding this same force of electricity but heretofore unpublished.
The most basic understanding revolves around static electricity; where, like charges repel and unlike charges attract; which phenomenon results in the positive and negative assigns readily recognized in basic science. Realizing how man resorts to analogies or parables, he reverses technique by bringing the complex into simple uniformity. Thus, Amdahl converts the world of resistors, capacitors, diodes, current, amps, watts, and volts into easy conceptions of electrical magic transforming our utility and technological masterpieces.
One fault in Amdahl’s science is his description of atom theory: he proposes electron theory to maintain everything in the universe is composed of tiny particles called molecules; and most are too small to be distinguished even when using the best microscopes in the world. This definition of universe particles is not entirely correct, according to the minuteness expected in basic particles; therein, we might expect the ultimate particle to be a tiny, small, nanometer fraction of molecule mass (molecule mass composing two or more atoms). Even so, this journey into ultimate physics is not important to the simplification of electrical terms and workability but is offered here solely as a basic energy constituent.
While electricity might be hard to understand, as to wellspring and discontinuance posits, there can exist no doubt as to workability. Home appliances, transportation, computers, and other electronic marvels attest to the electron’s driving force. Truly, Amdahl simplifies a very complex subject — worthy reading for the professional electrician or the homebody who only flips a switch to advantage this most basic boost to advanced living.
Amdahl’s use of the biblical ‘parable’ to express electron mystery and complexity is well-used to magnify the hidden force in particle motivation, as was the use of kabala or cabbala in biblical communications. Cabbala and parables were extensively used to hide the real meanings of prophecy and principals in the legal-historicism giving rise to monotheism. Recent research converts the complexity into simple understanding. You are invited to further investigation and thus to compare these findings with traditional rote. And we must ask the question of Amdahl and other exponents of physics: What is the physical quality of the electron’s ground state as opposed to its quantized maximum at the 204th orbital? Solution will determine size for the Ultimate Particle.
Amdahl’s book is highly recommended reading for the budding physicist or career-minded electrical tradesperson.
