Electricity/Programming
For our very last unit in Physics, we tackled the daunting topic of electricity. I already knew a bit about electrical wiring, my great uncle being an electrical engineer, and in helping my dad rewire parts of our 60+ year old house. To learn this complex topic, we first worked with alligator clips, light bulbs and 9-volt batteries, experimenting with current and voltage. Then we performed different experiments, exploring parallel and series circuits. Once we had this basic knowledge under our belts, we moved on to breadboards and little bits of wire, learning about resistance, potentiometers, capacitors, and diodes. For our final test, we had to make an LED blink on and off. While we were doing this, we were also learning the programming language Python (0the eventual goal being to build a robot) on Codeacademy. The estimated time for this was around thirteen hours, though it took us much longer than that, probably around 15-20 hours.
Concepts:Circuit: a complete loop of conductive material with a power source
Resistors: poor conductors that reduce voltage (ex: light bulbs)
Voltage: power of electricity
Current: the amount of of electricity
Series circuits: When resistors are consecutively spaced, with no branches, they are in series
Parallel Circuits: When there is a split in resistors, they run PARALLEL to each other
Resistors: a material that reduces voltage because it is a bad conductor
I learned two very important things during this unit, and those were a) there is always another way and b) always have a resistor in the circuit. The golden rule of electrical engineering is not "how do I solve this problem", it is "how can i get around this problem?" Many times, I would simply put a resistor in parallel with another, and the circuit would work. THis is also true in coding. Instead of making a dictionary, i could just put a list. Instead of a float, and integer. When a circuit doesn't have a resistor, the current keeps multiplying exponentially, resulting in a battery getting super charged, hot, and eventually blowing up. Not a good experience, I wouldn't recommend it (the sad part is, it took my group two batteries to figure out what was wrong). That was the GOOD stuff. Onto the the bad. One of these things was overconfidence. For most of the first half, I thought I had current and voltage down cold. However, once we took the test, it became apparent that I actually had them mixed up. Definitely not good. Also, there were some points in the coding that got a little tedious, and thus I spaced out and got very little done. As you can see, though, very weak negatives for this project, I had a lot of fun, and now am considering being an electrical engineer (I enjoy devising new ways of doing something). A rousing end to the year, and I am glad it was this project, I loved (practically) every minute of it.
Concepts:Circuit: a complete loop of conductive material with a power source
Resistors: poor conductors that reduce voltage (ex: light bulbs)
Voltage: power of electricity
Current: the amount of of electricity
Series circuits: When resistors are consecutively spaced, with no branches, they are in series
Parallel Circuits: When there is a split in resistors, they run PARALLEL to each other
Resistors: a material that reduces voltage because it is a bad conductor
I learned two very important things during this unit, and those were a) there is always another way and b) always have a resistor in the circuit. The golden rule of electrical engineering is not "how do I solve this problem", it is "how can i get around this problem?" Many times, I would simply put a resistor in parallel with another, and the circuit would work. THis is also true in coding. Instead of making a dictionary, i could just put a list. Instead of a float, and integer. When a circuit doesn't have a resistor, the current keeps multiplying exponentially, resulting in a battery getting super charged, hot, and eventually blowing up. Not a good experience, I wouldn't recommend it (the sad part is, it took my group two batteries to figure out what was wrong). That was the GOOD stuff. Onto the the bad. One of these things was overconfidence. For most of the first half, I thought I had current and voltage down cold. However, once we took the test, it became apparent that I actually had them mixed up. Definitely not good. Also, there were some points in the coding that got a little tedious, and thus I spaced out and got very little done. As you can see, though, very weak negatives for this project, I had a lot of fun, and now am considering being an electrical engineer (I enjoy devising new ways of doing something). A rousing end to the year, and I am glad it was this project, I loved (practically) every minute of it.