Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1483624
NOVEMBER 2022 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 13 Bogatin: Yes. Much of my style comes from what I learned from classes at MIT. Not to say that there isn't rigor, but my professors emphasized the understanding part first, then the math, and I picked up on that. It is remark- able how far you can go with simple models to understand things. ey have the math at their core. Math is the language of engineering and science. You must have that, but you don't need to have every conversation with math. ere's one approach I use called strategic simplification. You want to simplify the prob- lem enough to understand the main points, answer important questions, and get to an answer quickly, but not so simple that you have degraded it, so it doesn't apply to real prob- lems. How do you take complex problems, describe them in a simple way to get an answer quickly, while still having the core of the prob- lem in the solution in the description with not so much math? Having said all that, math is important. If you have the opportunity, get as much as you can and apply it. Do it as a student, because when you're a professional engineer, you don't always have that time. Holden: Now with soware, you must be cau- tious about just plugging in numbers without understanding what they're simulating or the repercussions, because you could come out with a totally wrong answer and have no clue that it doesn't make sense. Bogatin: You're right. It's easy to get an answer these days with all the hardware and soware tools that are out there. You push a button, and you get an answer, but if it's not set up the way it's supposed to be, you have no idea whether your answer is realistic. Does it make sense? Having that understanding of what to expect is my "Rule No. 9." is comes from the engineer- ing judgment and the engineering intuition of knowing how things behave. Back to your original question, how impor- tant is physics? It's fundamentally important. Every electrical engineer who will do anything related to signal integrity, power integrity, or EMI needs a good foundation in fields from which they can then build their intuition and apply it to using the hardware and the soware tools. Shaughnessy: You have a PhD in physics. How would you describe the interrelationship between physics and circuit theory? Bogatin: I come at it from a physics perspec- tive, which is a little bit more emphasis on the fundamentals of the phenomena, the electro- magnetics, and the properties of the materi- als. at's my starting place. en I can decide, "When is it good to approximate using circuit elements?" One of my differentiators in the industry has been my physics background rather than an EE background. e irony is that I'm in the EE department at University of Colorado-Boulder (CU). I give students some of the electromagnetic side of things when we talk about circuit ele- ments. An inductor is a perfect example. An EE student learns inductors, capacitors, and resistors as ideal circuit elements with no idea about the physics of an inductor, and this idea of magnetic fields. If you only think of a little squiggly line—a coil—when you see an induc- tor, it doesn't give you that physical intuition. How do the geometry and materials affect the "When is it good to approximate using circuit elements?" One of my differentiators in the industry has been my physics background rather than an EE background.