Electronics
Before learning by doing electronics activities, I had a solid knowledge of electronics and circuits. During high school, I took an honors physics class and AP Physics C. Both classes heavily dealt with electricity. Both classes are heavily involved in the subject, be it the movements of electrons due to magnetism or working with circuits themselves. Because of this, learning by doing activities wasn’t really anything new to me. During the learning electronics activity, I used my previous knowledge to complete the separate switch solutions throughout the class. As we were trying to connect different switches to the circuit, my group added very rudimentary and straightforward switches to the circuit each time. It was interesting, however, to look around the class and see what switches other groups were creating. Specifically, it was interesting to see how much easier some of the other group’s switches operated. Another interesting thing about this activity was the last Challenge circuit that needed two switches that could switch on and off the light without affecting the other switch. At first, I completed the circuit thinking it was okay and that I had finished the activity, but upon further inspection, my first iteration of the challenge circuit was wrong. The jump in difficulty between the challenge circuit and the other solutions surprised me. But my group was able to figure it out in the end. During this Electronics activity, I can’t say that I learned as much new information as I used it to refresh my memory on these topics. The only aspect of this activity that felt challenging was the challenge circuit. I do not mean to sound arrogant or suggest that I already know everything there is to know about circuits and electronics. That is far from the truth. For this activity, I didn’t see much stuff that was new to me.