EeeyEe0e

Yesterday I had a confidence crisis at work. It started off with an equation with too many E's in it. It looked to me pretty much like the post title, and described an electric field entering a region, whilst oscillating according to a power of Euler's number (e), and pointing in the direction of the y-axis, but only one unit (einheit) long.

So in summary, Electric (E), Einheit (e), Eintritt (e), Euler (e). I looked at this equation and was thrown into despair. It is an amazing ability to be able to look at an equation and immediately recognise the significance of each term, to see that the direction of a vector doesn't depend on a constant value, or that the time-dependence doesn't depend on the direction. I looked at the equation, and could only see and say "EEEEEE". That was it. The same understanding as a five-year-old.

I recovered slightly, read the foreword to Calculus made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson, and found a book where they used "Incidence" instead of "Eintritt", and worked around the e for "Einheit". With most of the E's gone, things made sense again.

This happened to me once before, when I found an equation consisting of 17 J's and pretty much nothing else. I remember intensely wishing to never see a physics book again. The next time this happens, I will try to remember this advice: drop the book (or lecturer), but keep at the subject.