Electrical Engineering - AgTech

Instructor directions are listed below:

1. Ask students what types of engineers are familiar to them. Possible responses include electrical engineers, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, bioengineers, civil engineers, structural engineers, computer engineers, chemical engineers, etc.

2. Tell students that, in general, engineers are people who use science to design objects and systems that help solve problems.  Engineering is a medium to create. Just like an artist might work in oils or watercolor, an engineer might work with electricity or on a computer.

3. Explain that what students will build in this project will focus mainly on three types of engineering: electrical engineering, computer science, and mechanical engineering and that to make these concepts easier to understand, we will relate them to different parts of the human body.

4. Ask students if they have any ideas as to the role of an electrical engineer.  At the most basic level, we want students to understand that electrical engineers deal with electricity.

5. Explain to students that electricity flows in electrical circuits to power all the parts of our devices that need power.

6. Ask students if they think they know what part of the body we might relate to electrical engineering.  The answer we are looking for is "the blood", or circulatory system. Our heart pumps our blood from our heart out to all the parts of our body that need blood and then back to our heart.

7. If you are using the Thinkabit Lab Notebook, you can fill in the blank towards the bottom of page 12:

   • Electrical Engineering: This is like the  BLOOD  in our bodies.

8. Describe how electrical engineering is related to the blood in our circulatory system by asking:
   • How is the circulatory system like an electrical system with which an electrical engineer would work?
   • How many hearts does the body have?
   • How many power sources do most devices have?
9. Further explain the interconnected ideas:
   • Veins and arteries form a loop through the heart, just like an electrical circuit forms a loop connected to a battery or other power source.
   • The loop in the circulatory system needs to be complete for it to work, just like in an electrical circuit.
   • The heart moves blood throughout the body just like a battery or other power source moves electric current throughout a circuit.
10. Generate more discussion by asking: “Do all parts of your body require the same amount of blood?” Then, explain that different parts of the body need different amounts of blood, similar to how each component on the Arduino board needs its own amount of electricity. Show the Arduino board circuit to the class and ask students to notice the many tiny components of the Arduino board circuits, just like the human body has many different types of organs.
     
11. Summarize the electrical engineer to blood analogy by explaining that one of the primary responsibilities of an electrical engineer is to take one power source and supply electricity to each component on an electrical circuit at the right pace. If too much electricity is supplied, the component will break. If too little electricity is supplied, the component won’t work.

At the Thinkabit Lab, we focus on the three most commonly used types of engineering: electrical, mechanical, and computer science engineering. To help students visualize how these three types of engineering work together, we use an analogy to connect them to the three main human body systems starting with the comparison of electrical engineering to blood. Rather than providing the analogy of electrical engineering being like blood in our bodies, ask students to help define what an electrical engineer does, and then ask them to relate that activity to a particular system of the body. You may need to guide some of the conversations, as many students think of electricians when they hear electrical engineer. You can also use the internet to search for an electrical engineer and see what their job entails.