Electricity to Art

Electricity to Art

A traditional unit on electric circuits might focus developing understandings about:

• Ohm's Law relationship between Voltage, Current, and Resistance.
• The properties of series and parallel circuits
• The idea of equivalent resistance
• Power and Energy
• etc.

In order to make an engineering centered unit on electric circuits these core ideas were examined along with the following questions:

• What meaningful product(s) could be produced?
• What iterative design process might be necessary to create the product? What variables can be optimized? Can the data collected around these variables inform the design decisions?
• What are the constraints (things the product has to do or can’t do) and criteria (variables that can be optimized) associated with the product?
• What additional content standards could be addressed through the Engineering Design Process

A preliminary investigation that I traditionally have student do in an electric circuits unit involves determining how current and voltage affects the brightness of lightbulbs of various resistances. This investigation lead to the idea of posing a challenge to students to get 3 lightbulbs in one circuit to shine at 3 different levels of brightness. Fortunately there are many solutions to this problem that can be achieved with just a handful of circuit components, which could act as constraints on the project. The answers are varied and not trivial.

Moving forward with this idea, I wanted to incorporate the idea of power consumption to get students thinking about energy generation and sustainability. With groups of students working together, optimizing circuits based on power drawn provides a natural and obviously useful criterion to optimize for a battery powered device. Since no simple series or parallel circuit could serve as a solution, the need to develop more complex circuits drove the students and the need for equivalent resistance calculations was a natural outcome in order to determine power and current draw.

The idea of embedding the project in the context of a electric art piece allowed for stakeholders, a context for caring, additional criteria and constraints, and a creative outlet that is often lacking in science.

Final products are authentic pieces of work that can include a circuit/art prototype, a schematic circuit diagram, a materials list, assembly instructions, a presentation to stakeholders, or a reflection on the engineering design process.

This project has been designed to deliver a unit on electricity in the context of an engineering problem in order to expose students to the full spectrum of the engineering design process. The project based theme is a wonderful way to engage and motivate students by presenting an open-ended, authentic problem with a variety of possible outcomes. The various real and meaningful products developed by students are great for assessment and a valued use of time by students.