Note:
If teaching middle schoolers, the lesson will end on page 5, titled "Time to Build". If teaching high schoolers, continue until the end of the lesson.
Intro:
Can anyone say what an engineer does? Engineers are Problem-Solvers; they solve problems dealing with how we relate to the world. Electrical engineers focus on how to solve problems dealing with electricity and magnetism, for instance, how to build a little box that we can carry around and use to speak to anyone in the world with a similar box (motion to a cellphone). At the heart of all of this is an understanding of how electricity works and how to get it to do what you want it to do.
To begin understanding electrical engineering, a useful parallel can be drawn. Let's focus on a water wheel. The wheel uses the power of flowing water to generate energy. Ask the students what components are involved in a complete water wheel system.
(Ex: Water, wheel, pipes)
Water wheels are designed by mechanical engineers, not electrical engineers. Water wheels are used in mills, oftentimes to grind crops such as wheat into flour. Its principles easily apply to electrical engineering.
Take a river for instance. It would be the source of water for the water wheel. In that sense, the river could be comparable to a battery, since a battery can be thought of as the "source" of electricity for a circuit. Similarly, the water itself used in a water wheel is comparable to the electricity used in a circuit. Pipes used to redirect the flow of water would be like resistors and wires in an electrical circuit, and the wheel itself would become a light bulb.
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