Summer SAVY, Session 6 Day 4, Intro to Engineering (Shuman & Green) (5th-6th)
We began the day talking about the grand challenges that electrical engineers face around sustainability, security, health, and enriching life. As we talked about electrical engineering, students realized that electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after the commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation, distribution, and use. Students came to understand that electricity is the lifeblood of our civilization; without electricity, our society would fall apart. Electrical engineers are involved in power generation in power plants, distribution through power lines, substations, and transformers, and have an immense focus on safety.
To begin thinking about the basics of electricity and voltage, we related energy flow to a water hose. The water is the charge, the pressure of the water is the voltage, and the flow of water is the current. We then looked at voltage and power equations. After learning about electrical engineering in a general sense, students dove into the basics of electricity and power engineering. They learned that power is generated in power plants, transmitted along high voltage lines, routed through substations, to a transformer, and then used in buildings and homes, and power engineers are involved at every step of the way. Students replicated this generation of power by creating series and parallel circuits. They paid attention to the brightness of the bulbs within each.
Building off of what they discovered about circuits, students learned about direct and alternating currents and built a DC motor out of glass jars, rubber bands, batteries, wires, and magnets. Students learned how a rotating magnetic field, when interacting with suitably arranged coils of wire, can be made to produce a rotating mechanical force, i.e. an electric motor. Unfortunately, we were not able to successfully create one of these motors, but we did watch a video to see what a completed motor should do.
We took a deeper dive into a famous engineer: Nikola Tesla. We read Bright Dreams: The Brilliant Ideas of Nikola Tesla by Tracy Dockray. In the book, we learned that Nikola Tesla thought of a new way of electricity- alternating currents. He worked with Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Although he did not invent the Tesla car, like many of us thought, he did invent the fluorescent light, parts that made a wireless radio, and even “the motor that is used today in a fast, electric sports car.”
Dinner Table Questions:
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What is a series circuit? What is a parallel circuit? How do they each work?
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What is the difference between direct and alternating currents?
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How did your simple motor work?
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What is Nikola Tesla’s story?
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What is the issue with nuclear fusion?
Additional Learning:
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A question was asked about why blue LEDs were hard to make. There is a video on the Veritasium YouTube channel that explains this well.
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We began the day talking about the issues with nuclear fusion. We ended the day watching a video explaining this problem. You can watch the video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzK0ydOF0oU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY
- Another interesting video about generating nuclear power is Real Engineering’s Helion video.