Spend a few moments of time with your class to review some of the “rules” for building circuits before they begin. Students will also develop real troubleshooting skills as they occasionally make circuit construction errors. This way, the mathematical theory “comes alive,” and students gain practical proficiency they wouldn’t gain merely by solving equations.Īnother reason for following this method of practice is to teach students scientific method: the process of testing a hypothesis (in this case, mathematical predictions) by performing a real experiment. So, I suggest the following alternative approach: students should build their own “practice problems” with real components, and try to mathematically predict the various voltage and current values. They also need real, hands-on practice building circuits and using test equipment. Students don’t just need mathematical practice.

While this approach makes students proficient in circuit theory, it fails to fully educate them. To this end, instructors usually provide their students with lots of practice problems to work through, and provide answers for students to check their work against. It has been my experience that students require much practice with circuit analysis to become proficient. This way, you won’t have to measure any component’s value more than once. Another time-saving technique is to re-use the same components in a variety of different circuit configurations. One way you can save time and reduce the possibility of error is to begin with a very simple circuit and incrementally add components to increase its complexity after each analysis, rather than building a whole new circuit for each practice problem. I recommend resistors between 1 kΩ and 100 kΩ, unless, of course, the purpose of the circuit is to illustrate the effects of meter loading! If there are any substantial errors (greater than a few percent), carefully check your circuit’s construction against the diagram, then carefully re-calculate the values and re-measure.Īvoid very high and very low resistor values, to avoid measurement errors caused by meter “loading”.Carefully measure those quantities, to verify the accuracy of your analysis.Mathematically analyze the circuit, solving for all values of voltage, current, etc.Check the accuracy of the circuit’s construction, following each wire to each connection point, and verifying these elements one-by-one on the diagram.Carefully build this circuit on a breadboard or other convenient medium.Draw the schematic diagram for the circuit to be analyzed.Carefully measure and record all component values prior to circuit construction.For successful circuit-building exercises, follow these steps: You will learn much more by actually building and analyzing real circuits, letting your test equipment provide the “answers” instead of a book or another person. While this is good, there is a much better way. Typically, students practice by working through lots of sample problems and checking their answers against those provided by the textbook or the instructor.

Learning to mathematically analyze circuits requires much study and practice.

Series and parallel circuits