Eli the Ice Man, glad I remembered you

Image of a small inductor coil 

One can never be sure of the moment where something you learned in nuke school pops into your head at the strangest time.

Most of us are aware much of the information covered in training will not be applicable after your nuke days are finished. There are exceptions, my moment occurred during a job interview where the interviewer asked me the difference between Kilowatts (KW) and Kilo Volts Amperes (KVA). By the way, if you wondering my interview was for a sales engineer position.

I remembered kilowatts were units of power which were equal the product of voltage and current. As for the question posed I knew the relation of KW and KVA had something to do with the lag of the current due to the inductive portion of the current.

Then the phrase, "Eli the Ice-man", came back to me in an instant which I had not thought about since I completed Nuclear Field “A” school over 15 years ago in Orlando, Florida.

With this I composed myself and explained how current lags voltage in an inductive circuit as a result of the time required to generate its magnetic field and how kilowatts expressed the power available to do work and KVA measured the induction component of the power.

The interviewer seemed impressed since I do not hold a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. I still do not understand why I was able to recall Eli during a pressured situation. I guess I should give props to the Navy’s training as painful as it could be at times. Have you ever had a moment like this as an Ex Nuke??