I have been studying electricity as a hobby, using a highschool textbook, partially documented here. I am trying to leave no stone unturned, meaning that I'm trying to understand any and all concepts and terminology that the book presents. I am now reading about generators and how they produce AC. The chapter also explains how the voltage can at any time/point in the cycle be calculated using sinus. While I understand the gist of it, I don't understand the math behind it, because I simply suck at math. I almost failed math in highschool.... I'm fairly confident I could go on without understanding the math behind why and how the voltage cycles between polarities, but my somewhat neurodiverse brain simply won't let me. I want to, nay, I need to understand it.

So, should I:

  • grab a highschool math book and start from scratch until I reach the chapter on sinus?
  • only read up on sinus and whatever knowledge turns out to be a prerequisite to understand it (with a risk of cascading backwards...)?
  • other recommendations?

This is not a question about how generators work and I am not asking you to explain sinus to me here. I am asking for advise on how to (re)learn math at my age of 30+. I can invest about six hours per weekend. I am eager to learn! Please advise! 😊

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[–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

Read the Wikipedia article on sine and cosine and work backwards from there. At the high school level, the “elementary understanding” section is usually as far as they go. Understanding the math behind electricity is at an electrical engineering/university level and it’s going to be counterproductive to go down that rabbit hole when trying to learn fundamentals.

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