#Adafruit trinket 5v clock tutorial how to
The “wasted” time spent building real circuits will pay huge dividends when it comes time for them to apply their knowledge to practical problems.įurthermore, having students build their own practice problems teaches them how to perform primary research, thus empowering them to continue their electrical/electronics education autonomously. If your goal is to educate theoretical physicists, then stick with abstract analysis, by all means! But most of us plan for our students to do something in the real world with the education we give them. If your students will be working with real circuits, then they should learn on real circuits whenever possible. What is the purpose of students taking your course? I never cease to be amazed at how poorly students grasp instructions when presented in a typical lecture (instructor monologue) format!Ī note to those instructors who may complain about the “wasted” time required to have students build real circuits instead of just mathematically analyzing theoretical circuits: Discuss these issues with your students in the same Socratic manner you would normally discuss the worksheet questions, rather than simply telling them what they should and should not do. Spend a few moments of time with your class to review some of the “rules” for building circuits before they begin. Students will also develop real troubleshooting skills as they occasionally make circuit construction errors. This way, the mathematical theory “comes alive,” and students gain practical proficiency they wouldn’t gain merely by solving equations.Īnother reason for following this method of practice is to teach students scientific method: the process of testing a hypothesis (in this case, mathematical predictions) by performing a real experiment. So, I suggest the following alternative approach: students should build their own “practice problems” with real components, and try to mathematically predict the various voltage and current values. They also need real, hands-on practice building circuits and using test equipment. Students don’t just need mathematical practice. While this approach makes students proficient in circuit theory, it fails to fully educate them. To this end, instructors usually provide their students with lots of practice problems to work through, and provide answers for students to check their work against. It has been my experience that students require much practice with circuit analysis to become proficient. This way, you won’t have to measure any component’s value more than once.
Another time-saving technique is to re-use the same components in a variety of different circuit configurations. One way you can save time and reduce the possibility of error is to begin with a very simple circuit and incrementally add components to increase its complexity after each analysis, rather than building a whole new circuit for each practice problem. I recommend resistors between 1 kΩ and 100 kΩ, unless, of course, the purpose of the circuit is to illustrate the effects of meter loading! If there are any substantial errors (greater than a few percent), carefully check your circuit’s construction against the diagram, then carefully re-calculate the values and re-measure.Īvoid very high and very low resistor values, to avoid measurement errors caused by meter “loading”.Carefully measure those quantities, to verify the accuracy of your analysis.Mathematically analyze the circuit, solving for all values of voltage, current, etc.Check the accuracy of the circuit’s construction, following each wire to each connection point, and verifying these elements one-by-one on the diagram.
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