Ohm's Law

Yesterday the power went out at the training center and we were told
that it probably wouldn't be back on for the rest of the day. There have
been frequent outages the past week, but since the center has a
generator, the power usually comes back on in a few minutes. However,
the main switch apparently broke on Friday, and the part, we were told,
was too costly. They eventually solved it with a different type of
switch that was a bit more affordable, and power was back near the end
of the day. That still left us "in the dark" for a while, so one of my
Japanese colleagues, who is in charge of the electro-mechanical course,
showed me some graphs of the switch and explained what was wrong based
on Ohm's law. He's an older fellow and has years of experience as a
marine engineer, meaning that he can travel the seven seas and keep a
vessel running in tip-top shape the whole time. He said that as he
studied electro-mechanics, it was easy to memorize the various formulas.
He jotted down KVA is greater than KW, and said it was all explained by
1 equals "V" over "R". He said that he didn't really understand it at
first, but working over the years, "waah", the true meaning was
eventually revealed. There was no specific event, as one might imagine,
where he was intensely focused to keep the ship from going down,
instead, he simply hit upon the connection of all the things he'd
studied like a sudden enlightenment. He explained it well enough and I
felt a bit smarter, but I had to admit, I didn't feel quite enlightened
yet... at that moment, the lights flickered back on, so at least I could
say things seemed a little clearer.