Editorial [on the fundamentals of undergraduate electrical engineering]

It is here suggested that concepts that are close to real physical phenomena are fundamental. To give an example, an exhaustive study of the ramifications of an actual resistor-inductor-capacitor series circuit would be fundamental. This study would include nonlinear and hysteresis effects, variation of parameters with frequency, and distributed capacitance of the coil. Linear transient and steady-state phenomena would be part of such a study. It would include properties of ferromagnetic and dielectric materials, and would draw on field concepts almost as much as on circuit concepts. The study would be experimental as well as theoretical. The above is offered as an example, and it serves to introduce another viewpoint as to what is fundamental, this being the operation of the scientific method in creating a valid attitude about experimental evidence and conceptual models. We live in a real world in which experimental evidence is the final arbiter, but, perhaps unwittingly, we lead our students to believe that the world of conceptual models is the real world. A student with such a misconception is seriously lacking in fundamental knowledge.