Evaluating voltages and currents in electrical networks

Description of Bottleneck

Students in Electrical Engineering 101 classes struggle to evaluate currents and voltages in simple electrical engineering networks. Students do not consider when formulas like current divider or voltage divider are allowed and therefore use them without prior summarizing resistors. Therefore formulas are used in wrong scenarios (e.g. current divider formula for two branches, when there are more than two branches). To be able to use formulas one has to summarize subsequently resistors. Students have trouble "seeing" parallel and series resistors.

Positive Formulation: Students shall figure out series and parallel resistors and draw subsequent circuit schematics before and after after summarizing resistors. Then it is easier to decide which formula is allowed and usefull.

Modle the Task

A flowchart can be presented to students to visualize them the decision tree that has to be followed to analyse a circuit.

On the left side the image shows a flowchart which depicts how to solve a network analysis problem. On the right side is a minimal example to follow depict the steps performed with the flowchart.

People interested in this Bottleneck

User:Christine Niebler, Christian Kautz

Further reading

Niebler, Christine. "Overcome learning obstacles in circuit network analysis with flowcharts." 2023 32nd Annual Conference of the European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering (EAEEIE). IEEE, 2023.