Electronic Teaching Aid

A first year engineering project designed to teach students the fundamentals of electricity

A project that I worked on during my first year of engineering was an electronic teaching aid for children. The Kingston Museum of Healthcare host teaching sessions for local kingston elementary school. One of the hardest concepts for museum to teach is electricity. Our team comprising of five first year engineers constructed a teaching aid that would help the museum coordinator teach the fundamentals of electricity in a fun and interactive way. The name of our teaching aid is the Electric School Buss.

Photo of our team holding the Electric School Buss before delivering it to the Kingston Museum of Healthcare. Names of individuals from left to right: Cailey, Dimitri, Megan, Serena, and Alex.

The Electric School Buss is composed of two components, the patch-board and the modules. The component module houses a single component. In order to have many circuits that the students can construct, there is a variety of modules that were constructed:

• 1 Battery

• 2 Resistor

• 1 Variable resistor

• 2 LEDs

• 1 Switch

• 1 Sound buzzer

The modules attach to the patch board is through the ¼ inch male jack. The component is connected to the jack within the module. To place a component module into the circuit, the students have to simply insert the male jack of the module into the female jack of the patch board.

The convenience of the patch board is that it eliminates the need to make connection with wires. The concept of the board is that there is a closed circuit, or an electrical buss, running along all the female jacks. Once a component module is inserted, the current goes in the module, passes through the component, and then goes back into the circuit. When there is no module that is connected to the female jack, the current passes through as though nothing is interrupting it. Below is a drawn schematic of the inside of the patch board.

Starting from the top and going clockwise, the switch module, an LED module, a variable resistor module, the battery module, the buzzer module, the resistor module, and the second LED module.

Schematic of internal wiring, J1 - J4 are shorting jacks while J5 and J6 are regular 1/4 inch jacks

Internal wiring schematic of female jacks. The solid black line represents the series connection while the dotted lines represent parallel connections.

This automatic switching of paths when a component module is inserted is done using a specific kind of female jack called a Shorting Jack. When a cable is plugged into the shorting jack, the cable lifts up the tip connector which in turn breaks contact with the other piece of metal. When there is no cable, the two pieces touch. When no module is connected, the switch is closed allowing current to flow. When a module is inserted, the switch is open which makes the current change paths to go through the components and back into the circuit.

Using the patch-board and modules, a variety of circuits can be made to demonstrate the fundamental of electricity such as voltage, current, and resistance. Furthermore, the option to be able to build circuits both is series and in parallel brings with it even more learning opportunities. The photo below is of the prototype being used to construct a simple LED circuit using the battery module, resistor module, and LED module all in series.

Simple LED circuit constructed using the modules

Another LED circuit using a variable resistor to control the LEDs brightness

The Electric School Buss was tested and evaluated with elementary school students with a large success. Each student present for the demonstration was able to take hold of the modules and start building circuits for themselves. The design seemed to be intuitive where the students could build circuits and learn from their own curiosity. The use of the Electric School Buss as a teaching aid delivers a tangible, hands on experience for the students.

In addition to providing the Kingston Museum of Healthcare with a functioning teaching aid, I learned a tremendous amount about engineering design process, construction, and team efficiency. This project has left me with valuable lessons I continue to use in projects both in school and outside of school.

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