Friday, January 13, 2017

Blog Report Week 1



1.  The class format is:

Monday:                                           Wednesday:                                  Friday:
- Quiz discussions                           - Lab                                             - Blog commenting
- Lab introduction                             - Wrap-Up                                      - Blog discussions
- Lab                                                                                                              
- Wrap-Up

Outside of class:
- Response to comments                - Blog commenting                           - Finish blog entries
                                                     - Blog discussions                           - Comment on 2 blogs
                                                                                                           - Take-home quiz

Finals grades for the course will be calculated by a point system consisting of 1000 points

- Quizzes (15 x 30 points)
- Blog reports (15 x 20 points)
- Blog discussions (Also required for each week)
- Final Project (150 points)
- Midterm Exams (2 x 50 points)
- Final Exam (150 points)


2. Electrical Circuit Lab Safety Rules:

1) Don't work alone on energized electrical equipment.
2) Power must be switched off when handling projects components, make sure high voltage points are grounded, also remember capacitors can store dangerous amounts of energy.
3) When measuring a live circuit, make measurements with well insulated probes while having one hand behind your back.
4) Never under any circumstances touch electrical equipment while standing on a damp or metal floor.
5) Never handle wet, damp or ungrounded electrical equipment.
6) Wearing any type of metal, such as a ring or watch can be hazardous in an electrical labratory since such items make good electrodes for the human body.
7) Never lunge for a falling part of a live circuit.
8) Never touch two pieces of equipment simultaneously
9) Never touch a wire of a circuit.
10) Avoid heat dissipating surfaces of high wattage resistors and loads (They can cause severe burns).
11) Some components have exposed metal that is "hot". Be careful when working with these.
12) Ask instructor to review your circuit before applying power to it.


3. As you know current is what actually kills, and a very small amount of current can be lethal (unlike voltage). A small current of 0.01 Amps can cause a person to feel a painful shock, muscle paralysis, and labored breathing. A current between the range of 0.1 - 0.2 Amps can cause the heart to stop. Currents 1 Amp or above are considered violent, as they can cause severe burns, as well as death by asphyxiation due to muscular paralysis of the lungs and diaphragm.


4.


5. The tolerance of a resistor depends on the last band. A gold band means the resistance is (±5%) and a silver band means the tolerance is (±10%). Tolerance tells us how far off the resistance value can be from its expected value. As for our data below, they all fall into our gold's tolerance range, which would account for the slight measurement difference of the DMM from it's value.


6.

Since the tolerance bands were gold on all of the resistors, the tolerance is supposed to be within 5%. The values in this table show very clearly that the actual values are all within 5% of the predicted value.


7. For current, the multimeter has to be in series so it can measure the flow. For voltage, the DMM has to be in parallel to measure the difference from both ends. Current has to measured in series because it flows thru the multimeter as a path. For voltage, the probes must be placed in parallel to the component that you are measuring the voltage across. This is because it's a measurement of difference between two points and the probes precisely give that value as if it were a distance.


8. The power supply allows you to change to any voltage value between the range of 0 - 24 volts, the values are considered continuous, basically infinite possible values. However, some circuits cannot handle voltage loads above a certain amount.

9.

10. To experimentally prove Ohm's law, we can put a resistor with a known value into a circuit, while also controlling it's power supply voltage. There is a visible correlation between voltage, and the amperage in the table pictured below. Since Ohm's law states I = V/R, calculations using the resistors provided value prove the relationship between the three types of measurements to be true.



11. The following video and picture is of our 1st Rube Goldberg circuit in action:




12. Here is a circuit diagram drawing of the 1st Rube Goldberg circuit:



13. Say The room is dark for the beginning of our Rube Goldberg circuit's scenario, by hitting a switch for another circuit, it lights an LED which triggers the photo-sensor to send power to the motor in our circuit, thus the motor begins to spin, pulling a stopping block which releases a marble in the direction of a pressure sensor (another portion of the Rube Goldberg circuit).

Picture of Scenario:






6 comments:

  1. Very well done on your presentation. Very few complaints. On problem 6, maybe you could represent the percentage of tolerance calculated, even though it may be obvious that it shows. Very good job. Very ascetically pleasing blog.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the feedback, I added in text explaining that above the table pictured in #6. We try to keep things neat and detailed. :D

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  2. We really like the style of background you have choose. However, it seems like your format has gotten a little messed up in the "Outside of class" portion of the blog. In addition, your response to number 7 seems a little redundant. Also, in terms of your Rube Goldberg video I believe it would be best to show the sensor effecting the motor in the same frame of your video as opposed to showing a close up of each. Very clear pictures.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the catch on #7. For the video we decided to attempt to show the motor's start/stop. It was only a 1 second look away, and technically was all done in the same frame.

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  3. When you drew your circuit what program did you use to draw it? We drew it by hand. Also when we measured a couple of the resistors with 0 tolerance some were a couple off, and we think this might have been because red and orange are very similar colors and they should be labeled differently.

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  4. Good blog. I like your videos and your explanations. Also, good RG drawing.
    - Captions missing.

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