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Elementary Electrical Engineering MODULES

I. Introduction:
ENGINEERING ESSENTIALS:

Electrical engineering is a technical discipline concerned with the study,

design, and application of electricity! Through electrical engineering, we can
design devices and systems using electrical components such as resistors,
capacitors, transistors, etc. Electrical Engineers can design and work on items
such as super low power microcontrollers, PCB Design, high power turbines,
navigation systems, etc.
II. What are the basics of electrical engineering?
- Voltage, current, resistance and Ohm's Law

These are the three basic building blocks required to manipulate and utilize electricity.
With a constant voltage source, we can see how current and resistance change. With a
high resistance, there will be very low current flowing through the load.

III. Metric Prefixes & International System of Units (SI Units):

- When you're getting into electrical engineering, it's important to know
common electronic units and prefixes.
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- But what exactly is electricity? This is a very complicated question, and as you dig
deeper and ask more questions, there really is not a definitive answer, only
abstract representations of how electricity interacts with our surroundings.

- Electricity is a natural phenomenon that occurs throughout nature and takes

many different forms. In this tutorial we'll focus on current electricity: the stuff
that powers our electronic gadgets. Our goal is to understand how electricity
flows from a power source through wires, lighting up LEDs, spinning motors, and
powering our communication devices.

- Electricity is briefly defined as the flow of electric charge, but there's so much
behind that simple statement. Where do the charges come from? How do we
move them? Where do they move to? How does an electric charge cause
mechanical motion or make things light up? So many questions! To begin to
explain what electricity is we need to zoom way in, beyond the matter and
molecules, to the atoms that make up everything we interact with in life.
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IV. Going Atomic:

To understand the fundamentals of electricity, we need to begin by
focusing in on atoms, one of the basic building blocks of life and matter. Atoms
exist in over a hundred different forms as chemical elements like hydrogen,
carbon, oxygen, and copper. Atoms of many types can combine to make
molecules, which build the matter we can physically see and touch.

V. Building Blocks of Atoms

An atom is built with a combination of three distinct particles: electrons,
protons, and neutrons. Each atom has a center nucleus, where the protons
and neutrons are densely packed together. Surrounding the nucleus are a
group of orbiting electrons.

A very simple atom model. It's not to scale but helpful for understanding how an atom is
built. A core nucleus of protons and neutrons is surrounded by orbiting electrons .
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- Every atom must have at least one proton in it. The number of protons in an atom
is important, because it defines what chemical element the atom represents.
- The proton's nucleus-partner, neutrons, serve an important purpose; they keep
the protons in the nucleus and determine the isotope of an atom.
- Electrons are critical to the workings of electricity (notice a common theme in
their names?) In its most stable, balanced state, an atom will have the same
number of electrons as protons.
- The atom's electrons aren't all forever bound to the atom. The electrons on the
outer orbit of the atom are called valence electrons. With enough outside force, a
valence electron can escape orbit of the atom and become free. Free electrons
allow us to move charge, which is what electricity is all about.
- Speaking of charge...

VI. Flowing Charges

As we mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, electricity is defined as the
flow of electric charge. Charge is a property of matter--just like mass, volume, or
density. It is measurable. Just as you can quantify how much mass something has,
you can measure how much charge it has. The key concept with charge is that it
can come in two types: positive (+) or negative (-).

In order to move charge we need charge carriers, and that's where our knowledge
of atomic particles--specifically electrons and protons--comes in handy. Electrons
always carry a negative charge, while protons are always positively charged.
Neutrons (true to their name) are neutral, they have no charge. Both electrons
and protons carry the same amount of charge, just a different type.
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The charge of electrons and protons is important, because it provides us the

means to exert a force on them. Electrostatic force!
- Speaking of Electrostatic force!

VII. Electrostatic Force

Electrostatic force (also called Coulomb's law) is a force that operates between charges.
It states that charges of the same type repel each other, while charges of opposite types
are attracted together. Opposites attract, and likes repel.

- The amount of force acting on two charges depends on how far they are from
each other. The closer two charges get, the greater the force (either pushing
together, or pulling away) becomes.
- Thanks to electrostatic force, electrons will push away other electrons and be
attracted to protons. This force is part of the "glue" that holds atoms together,
but it's also the tool we need to make electrons (and charges) flow
- Speaking of CHARGE flow….
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VIII. Making Charges Flow

- We now have all the tools to make charges flow. Electrons in atoms can act as our
charge carrier, because every electron carries a negative charge.
- If we can free an electron from an atom and force it to move, we can create
electricity.
- Consider the atomic model of a copper atom, one of the preferred elemental
sources for charge flow. In its balanced state, copper has 29 protons in its nucleus
and an equal number of electrons orbiting around it. Electrons orbit at varying
distances from the nucleus of the atom. Electrons closer to the nucleus feel a
much stronger attraction to the center than those in distant orbits.
- The outermost electrons of an atom are called the valence electrons, these require
the least amount of force to be freed from an atom.

This is a copper atom diagram: 29 protons in the nucleus, surrounded by bands of circling electrons.
Electrons closer to the nucleus are hard to remove while the valence (outer ring) electron requires
relatively little energy to be ejected from the atom.
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- Using enough electrostatic force on the valence electron--either pushing it with

another negative charge or attracting it with a positive charge--we can eject the
electron from orbit around the atom creating a free electron.
- Now consider a copper wire: matter filled with countless copper atoms. As our
free electron is floating in a space between atoms, it's pulled and prodded by
surrounding charges in that space. In this chaos the free electron eventually finds
a new atom to latch on to; in doing so, the negative charge of that electron ejects
another valence electron from the atom. Now a new electron is drifting through
free space looking to do the same thing. This chain effect can continue on and on
to create a flow of electrons called electric current.

A very simplified model of charges flowing through atoms to make current.