Engineering Applications of Electricity

Have you found it difficult to teach electricity and magnetism in a way that makes it relevant and exciting for your students? Is it hard to get your students to understand how important electricity and magnetism is to their everyday lives? The intent of this workshop is to review some essential concepts of electricity and magnetism while discussing their engineering applications. From iPods and computer memories to electricity generation and wireless communications, electricity and magnetism has been an integral part of the rapid technological advancement of our society over the past one-hundred years. Through small-group activities we will examine the concepts of capacitance, inductance, and Faraday’s law and how these can be combined together to solve a current engineering problem. Each participant will leave with a kit that will enable them to incorporate these ideas into their classroom, such that their students can gain a greater insight into this extremely useful area of physics.

Micah Stickel’s love of physics began with the exceptional teachings of Mr. Stock and Ms. Ness at Humberside Collegiate Institute in the west end of Toronto. Since then he has gone on to study electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, receiving his PhD degree in 2006. In 2007 he joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto as a lecturer. He has taught the second-year Electric and Magnetic Fields course numerous times and strives to bring the engineering realities into the classroom through demonstrations and discussions of current engineering developments of electricity and magnetism.