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thundara  ·  3213 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 27, 2016

I didn't either before ~15 months ago, but as with most research topics, when you're in a lab you're surrounded by experts (i.e. my adviser built one of these for his PhD) and learn about how they work pretty quickly.

If you have a high-school-level of physics, you can pick up on things like "magnetic fields move charged molecules" even if you don't know the physics-PhD-level equations to describe those movements or the MechE-PhD-level skills to machine one yourself.