Adventures in Electrical Engineering Or How I Spent My Summer Vacation Thomas Reed Poteet High School E 3 Summer Research Program At Texas A&M Adventures in Electrical Engineering Or How I Spent My Summer Vacation Adventures in Electrical Engineering

Dr. Butler-Purry’s Research Determining Potential Power Transmission Line Failure For insight on this project and its goals, read the notes in PowerPoint edit mode.

Short-Term Monitoring Experiments Complete Setup Diagram

Signal Measurement Units  Two clamp-on current transducers (Pearson Electronics, Inc.). Ratio = 0.1 V/A. Connected to the primary side of the transformer.  Voltage measurement from secondary side. Phase Current Neutral Current Pad Mounted Transformer Primary Side Secondary Side Online, non-destructive

Project on Electricity “What is Going On?”

Explanation of Project Through a series of experiments with circuits, building different types circuits using batteries and resistors, and collecting and analyzing data, students will discover relationships between voltage, current and resistance. Also, they will look at what effect power has on the system and do analysis on current and power usage.

Phase 1 of Project Students, in groups of two, are to “build” the required circuits, using up to four size D batteries (1.5v) and different size resistors. They will examine simple circuits and circuits in series and in parallel, and determine relationships and write equations.

Phase 2 of Project Students will be introduced to Power and its relationship to voltage, current and resistance. Students will then look at the power usage in their own homes and determine power and current usages for several scenarios and design a room around current and power usage.

Phase 1 Circuit Builders Project

Procedures document. Along with this page, students are given directions on how to set up circuits. All the worksheet can be accessed by double clicking the Word Document Icon in PowerPoints edit mode.

This is the initial experiment to get the project running. Helping either whole class or with the groups, students are carefully monitored to insure desired outcomes.

This experiment is to have data to compare with the first so the students will have more than one example to draw from when they are writing the general equation.

In this portion of the project they are to derive the general equation V=IR, or variant, from previous experiments and are to verify their findings in another experiment.

Here students will begin to understand what happens when resistors are put into series.

Now students will verify previous findings and write a generalized equation for a general series.

Students explore resistors in parallel. In groups, students collect data. As whole class, discuss outcomes and relate to previous experiments and aide students in finding correct relationship.

Here students explore parallel resistors again. They collect data and determine formula for the resistance of the circuit with aide of teacher in whole class discussion.

Phase 2 Home Project

In this Phase of the project, students take a look at POWER. They are given the power equation, P= VI & P=I 2 R, and are to find for missing value in several situations.

In this section of the project, the students are to look at the power usage in their homes.

In this part, students are to find out power demands and current requirements for the room the trips its circuit breaker most often. They are to determine the maximum and minimum number of items that can be plugged in and turned on without tripping the breaker.

This is the final stage of the unit. The students design the electrical usage of a room and decide on number and type of breakers needed.