When I solve problems in front of my Electrical Engineering students at San Diego State University (SDSU), I tell the students that I never know the answer or the exact technique when I start – I’m just as baffled as they are. Simply writing out the solution at the podium does not show the real steps (or the joy) of problem solving. Nobody approaching a problem ever knows the answer right away – especially Professor Dorr! I often compare this to a seagull found at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, pecking holes through plastic bags looking for food. Sometimes he comes up empty with nothing but garbage, but sometimes he finds a delicious bag of French fries or even a half-eaten burger. I encourage my students to act in a similar fashion, “pecking” at the problem with bits of knowledge until they manage to find their equivalent of a dropped hot dog, usually in the form of finding the right equations with the right number of unknown variables – or perhaps they discover the small piece of understanding that they were missing. Just like the seagull, and just like the students, the SEA-310 Amplifier was designed without the final answer in hand and was developed over time with lots of curious pecks until it became what it is today.
– Professor Dorr
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