Summer SAVY Session 6, Day 4, Electrical Engineering
What a great day in that the students began their group projects to design and create an electrical grid system! There was brainstorming, laughter, intense work, and a few calls for help, but the teams are on schedule to complete their work in the morning and present their ideas (and questions) to the class. It is very exciting to watch their learning expressed in this fun, challenging and collaborative way!
We are still wondering about the implications of a possible natural disasters to the degree of multiple primary and secondar effects? How can we analyze and plan for addressing complex and multilevel problems? We hope to look at the electric grid failures in Texas during the extreme weather in February of 2021 and the current conditions at Hoover Dam. We are thankful for those that keep us powered up with great design planning and reliable responses to emergencies. We are also appreciative of those that work to anticipate challenges and continuously re-design and improve our power grids. How can the concept of redundancy be harnessed? How can we maintain efficiency in our design plans so that our economic systems are not overburdened?
The students learned more about the many thrilling advances on display at the Chicago World Fair or more specifically known as the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. George Ferris paired his engineering expertise with the direct current power advanced by Nickola Tessla for a spectacular show. We still need to discuss the tactics of Edison and Tessla in their propaganda war to discredit each other’s researched products. We’ll definitely do that tomorrow so that each child walks away with a better understanding of the tricks they used and the true safety concerns in working with massive amounts of electricity.
Good things can be the result of bad events. We’ll look at more failures to seek out opportunities for improved designs, coordinated organizational systems, and investments in infrastructures, Here are some events will still consider. What observations can be made closer to home in order to prevent an outage in your home? Are there overloaded outlets or tree limbs interfering with tap lines? What backup systems does your family have when the power goes out. I look forward to sending our final recap tomorrow! Stay cool!
What happened in South America?
How did the Texas Power Grid Fail?