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.
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:
