{"id":5410,"date":"2024-03-22T19:55:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T23:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=5410"},"modified":"2024-03-22T19:55:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T23:55:36","slug":"the-elegance-of-vendor-tutorials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/22\/the-elegance-of-vendor-tutorials\/","title":{"rendered":"The elegance of vendor tutorials"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
A portion of Edmund Optics’ discussion on ultrafast lasers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fourteen years ago, I wrote a blog post that celebrated catalogs as useful educational materials<\/a>. It was brief, and some of the links might not work anymore, but the concept remains sound<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I teach at one of the top engineering schools in the world<\/a>, and I spend a lot of time looking at textbooks, designing courses, and crafting narratives to convey concepts, intuitions, and insights with students. It is not easy, and I have deep respect for people who take the craft seriously and find ways to share the fascinating things that we work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I want to highlight this idea again– how vendor materials can be very practical learning resources. I use the Thorlabs web site in one of my courses– in fact, one of my homework assignments is to stock a Thorlabs shopping cart with the items needed to replicate an optical system we discuss in class. Full disclosure: Thorlabs has never paid me a dime (but I would probably cash the check if they sent one).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just today I came across Edmund Optics’ application note on ultrafast lasers<\/a> and it is hands down the most accessible, pithy description I’ve ever come across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is this? <\/strong>Why are vendors so efficient and effective at generating this sort of tutorial information? <\/em>Perhaps it is because they are constantly interacting with customers that have small gaps in their understandings. The customers are sophisticated, but they might not quite understand the engineering trade-offs in a particular device. Vendors are constantly educating their customers– on how to select items, how to use them, and what sort of trade-offs are fundamental to the technology they’re working with. Maybe this is only part of the reason. Regardless, I am grateful. Both as a user, and as an educator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a>A portion of Edmund Optics’ discussion on ultrafast lasers.<\/p>\n

Fourteen years ago, I wrote a blog post that celebrated catalogs as useful educational materials<\/a>. It was brief, and some…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5412,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410\/revisions\/5412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}