Guys,
I KNOW the problem well. Ed, this is my 19th year of teaching apprentices, I expect we could swap some stories.
Steve, I don't know what it was but I never could stand that some apprentice/journeyman knew more than me about the subject at hand. It most certainly did not come easy, but I would read anything I could on the subject at hand until I was also competent, you're right, I don't see a lot of that anymore.
I like to draw 3 coils on the board and ask the students to connect them for Open, closed Delta, and then Wye, that usually gets their attention, and they usually find it pretty neat that by the end of my first semester they can not only connect them on the board and in class, (instead of spitting out an answer in rote memory for a test) but understand why a delta is always a high leg with a neutral, and why a wye is 208 and not 240.
I also jog them from their first year ( you know where they learn all that useless dc electronic theory) by asking them how a capacitor works. About the time they tell me it's a conductor with an insulator around it (sometimes they go further, sometimes not, depends on the class) I hold up a foot long piece of THHN, then slip it into a 8" piece of pipe. NOW we can begin our true discussion of induction, it's benefits, and it's problems.
Just some of the things I do to perk their ears up, seems to help most of the time.
