Yes, they're good practical tests, those, John.
Back in the good old days, when
IAL Medical Services were still a source of work for ex-pat biomeds happily roaming the world, there was a guy who used to do a lot of the interviewing for them (and who, sadly, is no longer with us), who used to keep a few electronic components in the top drawer of his desk. He used to open the drawer, and without glancing inside, just fish out any old thing, and toss it on the desk. He would then invite the candidate to talk about it, usually resulting in much waffling, and sweating of palms. Of course, I saw through this technique, and realized that it was definitely a case of "least said, soonest mended"!
I later tried it when meeting people myself. You’d be surprised (or, there again, perhaps you wouldn’t) at the lengths people would go to to "impress". Some would get right down into the realms of free electrons, holes, gates and all the rest, when I would have been quite satisfied with "… oh, that looks like a DIL 74-series chip" (and even
more impressed if he had added "yeah, TTL at 5 VDC")!
So, the moral of the story must be:- if you don’t know, say so. Best not to waffle!
