It didn't teach me anything about electronics, I was too young to really grasp what I was doing. It taught me that with sufficient knowledge you can make something out of individually useless bits of electronics.
You're right to be more demanding of your undergrad quant class but this might be just the thing to get your 8 year old niece/nephew interested in science.
You absolutely can in the UK. I pay £15/mo for the same service my friend pays £34/mo with a phone. He's in a 24month contract instead of my 12 and will end up some £150 down over the course of the contract.
That seems bizarre in the UK. I pay $24/mo and get truly unlimited data, with tethering included, as well as 2000 minutes and 5000 texts (and receiving doesn't come out of your allowance in the UK, the caller pays that fee).
It's absolutely cheaper to buy devices outright here.
Example of Three's One Plan for a 32GB 5s (£):
24 mo contract
Device 99
Plan 46
24 mo total = 1203
12 month contract + BYOD
Device 629
Plan 15
24 mo total = 989
"The Legislative Council is the law-making body of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It comprises 70 members, with 35 elected directly by geographical constituencies and 35 elected by functional, occupation-based constituencies. Apart from its law-making function, the Legislative Council debates issues of public interest, examines and approves budgets, receives and debates the Chief Executive's policy addresses, and endorses the appointment and removal of the judges of the Court of Final Appeal and the Chief Judge of the High Court."
So their legislature is 50% industry experts. The Executive Council can be made up of experts as well, but it doesn't have to be.
Take education as an example. The Secretary for Education is a businessman, however there is an educator in the legislature, the Voluntary Chief Executive (Development), Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union.
Funner fact, the Trident II D5 ICBM shoots up to low altitude orbit and then fixes its location with a star sight! GPS is assumed missing in the global thermonuclear war scenario.
Less than 100 years ago, GPS wasn't a nav tool until the mid 90s. Astro nav was the standard right up until then and is still taught to masters today. We have calculators for atmospheric diffraction but the long hand method is still used.
But when driving a manual car the driver doesn't put the clutch in while braking until almost completely stopped.
If you need to slow down quickly enough that you're not just letting the car coast in the gear you were driving in then using the brakes to bleed some speed off isn't going to be less fuel efficient than down-shifting to a gear that will stop you in time. The engine is engaged for almost exactly the same period of time.
It still wear components that are not as easily replacable as brakes. As for coasting to a stop whilst still in gear, I agree with that being a good idea but I don't think that's what digitalWestie was getting at.
I think we're talking about different things. digitalWestie's advice to use the gears to slow implied changing down through the gears to use the engine to brake, not simply leaving the car in gear while applying the brakes.
For what it's worth, it does makes complete sense to leave the car in gear while braking and not to change to neutral.
Engine braking wears transmission components which are considerably more fragile and expensive than replacing brakes. Engine braking only stops you using the driven wheels, brake discs apply to all wheels.
One thing I have been taught to use is the "shit sandwich". Positive, negative, positive. The danger is your negative lesson being lost so this method does favour directness.
The advantage of finishing on a high is it often lets the conversation continue so that your subject can ask for clarification if they need it.