Issue #14: April 22, 2025
Discover the “magic in nearly everything”:
Explore electrical engineering with Paul Jr.’s dad!
What’s Inside This Issue?
- Concepts and Terminology: Discover concepts and terminology introduced in the featured article.
- Featured Article: Join us as we explore the amazing world of electrical engineering (“EE” for short).
- About the Author: Learn from Paul Jr.’s dad, Dr. Paul Dennig Sr., who has over 50 years of work and hobby experience.
- Hands-On Activities: Engage in a fun activity to learn more about EE in your life.
- EE and Environmental Equity and Sustainability: Discover how pursuing EE can help create a cleaner, greener, and fairer world for everyone.
- Setting the Stage for Your Future: Explore an electrical engineering career pathway.
- Glossary: Recap key concepts and terminology from the featured article.
1. Concepts and Terminology
- EE is shorthand for Electrical Engineering. It is the name of a trade or profession, and it is also the name of the department you would study under in a college or university to get the training to do that work. The ‘electrical’ part pertains to understanding the properties and influences of electrons and other charges in all kinds of situations, whether these charges stand still, or if they move in a vacuum or through any substance. The ‘engineering’ part of EE refers to applying the science behind it all to make beneficial products and services possible. Some examples include the electric power delivered to your home, the cell phone held in your hand, and medical instruments in the doctor’s office that help diagnose illnesses.
- Electrons come from the outer shells of atoms, they hold matter together, and electrical engineers borrow some of them to do incredible things. It’s almost magic! Things involving the applications of electrons are said to be ‘electrical’ in nature.
- Electromagnetic waves are also a key part of EE. They can already exist or be created. To create them, we use electrical currents. When you study waves, you begin to understand how applications work, like radio receivers, broadcast antennas, smart phones, and microwave ovens.
2. Featured Article
By Paul Dennig Sr., Ph.D.
It’s up to you – what EE magic would you like to pull out of your magician’s hat? Illustrated here: a 3d-printed product prototype with built-in electronics, a new smartphone, and a connection device to a state-of-the-art computer.
Image source: Generated using Ideogram AI
Let’s try this question: What area of study could teach you how to do all of these things?
- hold & lift: anything from a tiny speck to a massive weight?
- make & cut: use tools with spinning bits or powerful lasers to cut any material?
- see & light: in the dark and make colors dance?
- listen: to your favorite music with friends, anytime, anywhere?
- travel & locate: move efficiently across the planet, knowing your exact location?
- communicate & connect: with people visually, even across continents?
- manage & schedule: your mornings, time, and goals?
- feed & stock: help stores manage goods and even enable you to cook?
- remember & record: voices, photos, and videos to keep forever?
- learn & explore: through reading and watching as part of lifelong learning?
…and so much more
The answer? Electrical Engineering (E.E.)! These action words show why electrical engineering is so important. Imagine life without them! Just try taking away any and see how that affects your life! Electrical engineering helps us do all of these great things!
The Awesome Foundation of Electrical Engineering
What is EE, anyway? How did it get started, and what does it look like today? It all began long ago, when the first enthusiasts of things electrical in nature called themselves “electricians.”2 These people might have been fascinated by observing thunder and lightning, or by feeling the force of something attracted by static electricity, or by trying to understand how a battery works. Other people tried to understand how a mammal or frog muscle could twitch when it had an electrical stimulus applied, or how an electric fish could shock someone. At first, it wasn’t even clear that ‘animal electricity’ was the same stuff as that which was made by a static electricity generator or lightning.3
Ancient ‘electricians’ rubbed a piece of amber with wool and thereby discovered static electricity. Humanity has since gained much mastery over the electron and its many applications, an endeavor today called electrical engineering.
Image: Generated using Ideogram AI
Image Credit: A Travers l’Electricite (G. Dary, Paris, 1900).
Today, however, we know much more about all of these things and realize they share common origins. Through systematic studies over the ages, aided by the developing fields of physics and mathematics, and with help from chemistry and biology, folks found several unifying themes that help us to neatly organize our observations. Many of those ideas fit within “electrical engineering” today.
Let’s now move on to the key concepts in EE. First, think about everything around you and even inside you. It’s mostly made of two things: matter (things that have weight) and energy (weightless stuff that makes things happen). EE is all about understanding and using these two fundamental ideas.
Matter and the Amazing Electron:
Matter is built from tiny particles called atoms. Inside each atom, even tinier particles called electrons zip around a central part called the nucleus, which has a positive charge. Electrons have a negative charge4 – think of it like a tiny electrical superpower. Cleverly, we’ve learned how to nudge these electrons out of their atoms and get them moving so they can do useful things for us.
Imagine tiny roads for these free electrons – that’s what copper wires are like! We can guide electrons through these wires to different places where they can release some of their energy to power your phone, light up a room, and much more.
The Flow of Electrons in a Wire. Copper wire directs the flow of free electrons. A small piece of wire is illustrated here with a small applied voltage. Electrons enter the lower-voltage end of a wire, as shown on the left. Electrons may hang out at copper atoms along the way, even bump into some and lose a little energy, but eventually, every electron that enters must leave, as shown on the right.
Energy: The Driving Force (and Little Bit of Magic!)
Energy is super important in physics and especially in EE. It’s what makes everything go! Energy can show up in many forms. For example, atoms can have energy if they’re moving around a lot (that’s heat!). And those free electrons we talked about? They can also hold and carry energy. So, when you get electrons moving, you’re actually moving energy with incredible precision!
What EEs Do with Moving Energy:
Electrical engineers study all the different ways energy can move and then figure out how to use that knowledge to build cool stuff. With just a little bit of moving energy, you can send signals and information – like when you text a friend. When you increase the flow rate of energy, identical in meaning to ‘an increase in power,’ you can then do other things, too – like deliver the electricity to buildings so that they can turn on the lights, keep the temperature comfortable with an all-electric heat pump, and make tea and coffee!
Voltage and Current: The EE Power Couple
Electrical engineers measure how much energy is moving and how fast by looking at two key things: voltage and current.
Think of voltage as the “push” or the electrical pressure that makes electrons want to move from one point to another. It’s always measured between two points – like comparing the energy of electrons here to the energy of electrons over there.
Current, on the other hand, is the number of electrons flowing past a certain point in a given amount of time – it’s like the rate of electron traffic!
If you multiply voltage (the “push”) and current (the “flow”), you get power! Power tells you how quickly energy is being used or transferred. Different gadgets and systems need different amounts of power. Tiny bits of information need very little power to be stored or flow. But powering a city or charging an electric car quickly requires a lot more power, like the kind generated by power plants or huge solar farms.
The Amazing World of Electric and Magnetic Fields:
There are incredible things that happen when you store or move electrical charges (especially electrons). Even when charges are just sitting still, they create invisible magical things called electric fields. When you put a charge, like an electron, into one, the charge feels a force pushing on it. If you have a steady flow of electric charges (like in a direct current, or “DC” for short), it also creates another invisible field called a magnetic field.
Now, if the current changes direction back and forth really fast (like in alternating current or “AC”), both the electric and magnetic fields start changing, too. If this changing current travels through something like a wire, it can even launch electromagnetic waves that travel away from the wire and into the air – that’s how broadcast antennas work! This is how energy can travel without needing matter to carry it! Antennas can work in reverse, too, catching waves and turning them into signals, meaning electrical currents in wires.
Image credit: NRAO
Electromagnetic waves are found in many different forms, like the radio waves that bring you music, the heat from the sun, and the light from your screen. Sound is also a form of energy that travels in waves. And guess who becomes a master of waves? Electrical engineers! You’ll learn how to both combine waves and separate them to do amazing things.
Electrical engineers use all of these amazing phenomena, like a magician performs tricks, to make things like radio, TV, and wireless internet possible.
Image Credit: QS Study: Definition: Superposition of Waves and Interference of Sound
Safety First!
Before any electrical work gets done, safety is always the top priority. Do you know what levels of voltage and current are safe? That’s a huge reason why it’s so important to get the right training to become a qualified electrician or electrical engineer. Work smart and stay safe!
Building Blocks of the Electrical World:
All this “magic” is possible thanks to the development of special materials and devices, often with the help of physicists and materials scientists. Some electrical engineers help design and create the basic building blocks of electrical circuits, like resistors, capacitors, and inductors, as well as tiny but powerful devices like transistors and integrated circuits (the brains of your electronics!).
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Other engineers take these components and connect them together to build circuits – sets of connected parts that do a specific electrical job. These circuits are then combined with other things to create larger systems, like your smartphone or a traffic light control system.
Amazingly, different systems can be connected over short or long distances to form networks, allowing them to “talk” to each other. This is how people around the world can communicate almost instantly using the internet and how entire regions can share electricity. It’s all about teamwork!
Image: Generated using Ideogram AI
The Connection with Computers:
Since electrical engineers invented the circuits needed to build the first modern digital computers, and because computer science (CS) and programming rely on computers, many universities initially combined EE and CS into one department (“EE & CS”). Today, both fields have become so advanced that you might find them in separate departments. Alternatively, you may find specialty areas within the department of EE&CS, such as: EE, CS, Computer Engineering, and even newer fields like Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering, and more.
So, You Want to Be an Electrical Engineer? Here’s the Inside Scoop!
Thinking about becoming an electrical engineer? Awesome! To make it happen, you’ll need to get some official training. That means you’ll want to go to a school whose program has gotten the thumbs-up from a professional engineering group. They check out what you’ll learn and say, “Yup, this program teaches you what you need to know to become a real electrical engineer!” This official approval is called accreditation, and it’s like a stamp of quality on the college or university.
Let’s say you’re looking at a typical four-year college program to become an EE. You’re probably wondering, “What will I actually study?” You might also be asking, “Will it be tough?”, “Will I even enjoy it?”, and “Is this a good career path?”
The name “electrical engineering” might make you think it’s only about electricity – like light bulbs, batteries, motors, old-school telegraphs and telephones, and power generators. And you’re partly right! That’s how electrical engineering got its start way back in the late 1800s, with all those cool inventions from over a century ago. But that was just the beginning – things have gotten way more exciting since then! Let’s explore what modern EE is all about.
What’s Actually Inside the World of Electrical Engineering?
Here’s a cool thing about EE: it rarely works alone! Just like putting together an awesome sports team, EEs usually work with people who have different but related skills. Think of it like this: to build a really amazing robot, you might need someone who knows how to design the moving parts (that’s often a mechanical engineer), someone who can program its “brain” (computer scientist or engineer), and someone who understands how it might interact with the human body (biomedical engineer).
Plus, just as there are tons of flavors of your favorite snack, there are also different specialties within electrical engineering! Let’s explore (i) how EE teams up with other cool fields and (ii) the different “flavors” (sub-disciplines) you can dive into within EE:
but many other teams work well together with it.
- Mechanical Engineering: (Think robots, power generation, anything that moves!)
- Computer Science & Engineering: (Think software, computer hardware, the “brains” of devices!)
- Biomedical Engineering: (Think medical devices, prosthetics, technology that helps the human body!)
- Physics, Chemistry, & Materials Science and Engineering: (Think understanding how things work at a fundamental level and creating new materials for electronics!)
These are just some of the common “teammates” that electrical engineers work with. There are many other exciting fields that connect with EE too!
Within EE itself, there are lots of specific areas you can focus on – think of them as different awesome careers within the main career. They are the sub-disciplines. We’ve listed some of them below and in our Glossary to give you a taste. Don’t worry about understanding them all right now; you’ll have plenty of time to learn the details if you decide to study EE! The goal here is to see if any of these sound exciting to you and help you figure out if EE might be a good fit. Remember, the most important thing is to find a career you’re truly passionate about – that passion will take you further than anything else!
Let’s Zoom In: 5 Big Adventures in Electrical Engineering!
Instead of listing every single specialty here, let’s look at 5 major “adventure zones” within EE that cover a lot of ground:
1. Powering Our World (Energy & Power Systems):
- What it’s about: This area is all about how we generate electricity (from sources like solar, wind, and traditional power plants), how we get it to homes and businesses (transmission through power lines), and how we control and convert it for different uses (like charging your phone or powering a factory).
- Think of it as: Being in charge of keeping the lights on and making sure everything has the energy it needs – from cities to electric cars! You could be designing the next generation of renewable energy systems or making the power grid smarter and more efficient.
2. Making Things Smart (Electronics & Embedded Systems):
- What it’s about: This involves designing and building the electronic circuits and systems that are the “brains” of countless devices. This includes everything from the tiny chips in your smartphone and computer to the control systems in robots and medical devices.
- Think of it as: Being the architect of the digital world! You’ll be creating the intelligence that makes our gadgets work, from processing information to controlling complex machines. This often involves programming and working with microcontrollers (like the brains you can purchase and play with called Arduino© and Raspberry Pi©).
3. Connecting the World (Communications & Networks):
- What it’s about: This field focuses on how we send and receive information wirelessly and through networks. Think about cell phones, the internet, Wi-Fi, satellite communication, and even how self-driving cars “talk” to each other.
- Think of it as: Being a master of connections! You’ll be designing the technologies that allow people and devices to communicate across the street or across the globe, sharing voice, data, and video seamlessly.
4. Sensing and Seeing (Photonics, Imaging, & Sensors):
- What it’s about: This exciting area involves using light and other forms of electromagnetic energy to sense the world around us and create images. This includes designing cameras, medical imaging devices (like MRI and X-ray machines), lidar systems for autonomous vehicles, and sensors that can detect everything from temperature to chemical composition.
- Think of it as: Giving technology the ability to “see” and “sense”! You’ll be working on the cutting edge of how we gather information about the world in new and innovative ways.
Image credit: Pursuit: Quantum boost for medical imaging
5. Robots and Intelligent Machines (Robotics & Control Systems):
- What it’s about: This combines elements of electronics, mechanics, and computer science to design and build robots and other automated systems. This includes everything from industrial robots that assemble cars to humanoid robots that can perform complex tasks. It also involves the “control theory” that makes these machines move and react intelligently.
- Think of it as: Bringing machines to life! You’ll be designing the hardware and software that allow robots to interact with the world, perform tasks autonomously, and even learn and adapt.
3. About the Author
Paul Dennig, Jr. and Paul Dennig, Sr., at Stanford University, Nov. 2017.
4. Hands-on Activities
(NOTE: If you do not have prior experience with making electrical things, it’s a wise idea to do these activities with an older adult to watch to ensure safety.)
A. Electricity. Many fun basic demonstrations of electricity usually only take some wire, a magnet, and a battery. Let’s build an electric motor! The links in the footnote will show you exactly how.5
There are two keys to making this motor work:
- Make sure your coil of wire is balanced in weight from one side to the other. It should spin well in its holder even without electricity.
- You must follow the directions carefully when it says to remove the enamel insulation from only one face of the wire, as shown above on the right-hand side of the “coil details.”
(If you liked this, also try a search on “homopolar motor”! Remember to disconnect when done, and watch out for a hot wire!)
B. Electronics. What about those electronic parts that we mentioned? We’ve written in earlier newsletters that there are many places to buy starter kits to learn about electronics. If you don’t or your school does not have one, they are not frightfully expensive, but not free either. You really should gain access to one and try it out to start gaining experience, or practice up more if you’ve already used one before. This is especially true if you’re seriously considering going down the EE path but are not quite sure yet. Introductory hardware kits may be found online. Here are just a few examples, in the Arduino© lineup:
For home:
- https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Starter-Tutorial-Compatible-Official/dp/B01DGD2GAO/ref=sxin_16_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa
- https://www.amazon.com/REXQualis-Development-Membrane-Receiver-Detailed/dp/B074WMHLQ4/ref=sxin_16_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa
For home and school:
Makey Makey Classic Kit
- What’s cool about it: The Makey Makey kit lets you turn everyday objects into touchpads! Using just alligator clips and a USB cable, you can connect things like bananas, playdough, or even pencil drawings to control your computer. It’s a creative, hands-on way to learn about circuits and electrical conductivity while having fun. Plus, it’s a great intro to the world of interactive technology.
- Projects you can make: Turn fruits like bananas and apples into musical instruments, create a piano out of paper or aluminum foil, and build interactive games or create your own art projects that react to touch.
5. EE and Environmental Equity and Sustainability
Electrical engineers contribute to environmental sustainability and equity in many ways, from designing cleaner power systems to reducing energy waste. While there are countless innovations in this field, this article focuses on three key areas where electrical engineers are making the biggest impact.
Clean Energy for Everyone
Not everyone has access to electricity, but electrical engineers are changing that with renewable energy like solar and wind power. Instead of relying on polluting fossil fuels, communities can now get power from the sun and wind—even in remote areas!
Example: In Kenya and Peru, engineers created pay-as-you-go solar power systems that bring electricity to over a million homes that previously had none. This means students can do homework at night, families can cook safely without kerosene, and hospitals can operate more reliably.
Smart Grids = Less Waste, More Power
Have you ever experienced a power outage? Some communities, especially low-income ones, lose electricity more often than others. Electrical engineers are fixing this with smart grids, which automatically reroute power when a problem happens. This means fewer blackouts and more efficient energy use.
Example: In Chattanooga, Tennessee, engineers built a self-healing smart grid that can fix power failures in seconds—keeping homes and businesses running smoothly and reducing wasted electricity.
Electric Cars & Clean Cities
Gas-powered cars cause air pollution, which is worse in cities and often affects low-income communities the most. The air pollution also spreads out over the Earth, adding to the global rise in temperature. That’s why electrical engineers are designing electric vehicles (EVs) and creating charging stations to make them accessible for everyone.
Example: Norway has one of the best EV charging networks in the world, making it easy for people to drive clean, electric cars instead of gas-powered ones. This helps reduce pollution and fight climate change!
Why This Matters
These innovations don’t just help the environment—they also create fair opportunities for people everywhere. By improving access to clean energy, reducing power outages, and cutting pollution, electrical engineers are making the world a better, healthier place for everyone—no matter where they live.
Want to be part of the change? Maybe you could be the next electrical engineer to invent a cleaner, fairer future!
6. Setting the Stage for Your Future
Your Path to Becoming an Electrical Engineer!
Want to be an EE? Here’s how:
- Learn by Doing: Start with simple battery-powered projects and build your knowledge. If others can learn it, so can you!
- Safety First! Understand the risks early. Lower voltages (electronics) are generally safer than higher ones. Lasers and microwaves need special care. Anything over 25 Volts can be dangerous. Learn safety before you touch anything!
- Practice: Begin with small hobby projects and work your way up in school and on jobs. You might start as a technician.
- Get an EE Degree: Consider a two-year Associate’s (AS) degree or a four-year bachelor’s program (BSEE). Bachelor’s programs offer a general foundation before you specialize in what excites you. Think of your degree as the start of lifelong learning.
- Get additional certifications or licenses as needed. For projects impacting life or safety (like medical or power equipment), a license might be required. You might remember our interviewee from the last issue, Johnathon Street,1 who earned his Professional Engineer license, enabling him to manage complex projects to meet industry standards.
Advice for High School Students
High School Courses That Will Help You Prepare
- Foundational Mathematics (Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry)
These foundational courses will provide the building blocks you’ll need to handle more advanced math in college. - Pre-Calculus
Pre-calculus prepares you for the more challenging calculus courses you’ll encounter in college and is crucial for many engineering problems. - Physics
Physics helps you understand how electrical systems work, from electrical charges and materials and devices, to basic circuits, to energy and power. It’s essential for any future electrical engineer. - Computer Science or Programming (if available)
Early experience with programming will help you later on when you need to use software tools in engineering.
Key Courses in an Undergraduate Degree in Electrical Engineering
- Calculus (I, II, and III in a quarter system; or I and II in a semester system)
Calculus is essential for solving engineering problems, particularly when dealing with electrical circuits and dynamic systems (in which the behavior, like voltages and currents and frequencies, change with time). These courses will form the backbone of much of your later studies. - Linear Algebra
A crucial course for understanding electrical signals and systems. Linear algebra helps you solve complex equations and manage data in various applications, including designing control systems and doing network analyses. - Differential Equations
Differential equations are used to model how an electrical system’s behavior evolves over time, for example, how the electrical current flows. Applications range from small circuits to more complicated systems, like networks for power generation or communications. - Circuit Analysis
This course focuses on analyzing and designing electrical circuits, a core skill in electrical engineering. You’ll learn how to solve for voltage, current, resistance, and more for a range of circuits, from simple to complicated. - Electromagnetism
This subject explores the principles of electric and magnetic fields, vital for understanding a wide range of electrical devices, from relays to motors and transformers, to wireless communication systems.
These courses will challenge and inspire you, laying the groundwork for a rewarding career in electrical engineering. We list them here so you have an idea of what lies ahead. With dedication and curiosity, you’ll be well on your way to turning your passion for technology into a profession! Also, please see our previous relevant Newsletters!
OK – Let’s say I’ve just got my degree in EE, then what can I do with it?
Alright, you’ve earned your EE degree – now what exciting paths open up? As a new EE, you’ll be equipped to:
- Solve a wide range of EE problems on your own and communicate effectively with other technical folks.
- Troubleshoot electrical equipment, and predict how electronic systems will behave often using computer simulations.
- Develop design skills on the job and contribute to bringing innovative new products to market.
- Evaluate product performance through testing and even explore market needs to suggest future products.
- Bridge the gap between hardware and software, making key decisions about features, cost, and launch timelines.
Many EEs find their niche in areas like design, development, manufacturing, and testing. You might even explore roles in marketing and sales. Over time, you could specialize further in a specific technical area or move into project or team management, or perhaps research and development. Smaller companies might also offer exposure to the business side of things.
How Soon Can You Start Your EE Journey?
Some entry-level roles in manufacturing and assembly can be accessible after high school with on-the-job training. However, for design and engineering roles, a four-year Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) or Computer Science (BSCS) is generally required. While the goal is four years, degree completion can sometimes take a bit longer.
Are Electrical Engineers Respected and Well-Compensated?
Yes, EEs are highly respected as the innovators behind the technology we rely on every day. While sometimes playfully labeled “geeks,” the reality is that everyone benefits from their work. Moreover, electrical engineering typically offers a strong earning potential, with the median wage for engineers being around $100,000.
7. Glossary
Electrical engineering areas of concentration:7
- Control Theory: This is how to design circuits [combinations of components (e.g., resistors, capacitors, and inductors) and devices (e.g. transistors, integrated circuits, computerized controllers, etc.)] , which together sense a piece of equipment’s operation and adjust the operation closer to your goal. Think “automated” equipment, everything from toasters and self-driving cars, to the most-awesome back-flipping robots!
- Photonics and Image Processing: You can (i) sense the behavior of situations (e.g., is someone at your front door?), or even (ii) communicate back and forth using light. These hardware projects (meaning the actual hard circuitry you can touch) often include cameras, and even possibly talking across oceans on fiber-optic cables. If you’re more on the software side, then you’ll take images captured using sensors, then manipulate the 1’s and 0’s of each pixel to enhance the image attributes (color, focus, resolution, zoom, etc.). When applied to medicine, you could even screen for cancer and other illnesses!
- Microwave and Radio Frequencies: Generally, we use lower power to communicate, such as by cell phones, but this category can also include higher powers for things like broadcasting radio signals around the world, detecting aircraft by radar, and also for cooking by microwaves! Give a shout out for radio telescopes!
- Acoustics: Love playing and listening to voice and music? Design, build, and use equipment based around sound.
- Discrete Devices, Sensors, Integrated Circuits, and MEMS Devices: The people who design circuits need parts to make things happen. The parts makers are critical people in this endeavor. Parts makers use principles of physics to design features in engineered products, and make them using chemistry and materials science. Often today, features are less than the diameter of a human hair, either or both horizontally across a device and vertically into the depth of a device. Sometimes you’ll etch patterns into polished slabs of materials, like silicon, to do amazing things. The four types of parts in our list here usually don’t do much by themselves until circuit and system and even network designers do their thing.
- Computer Design: Here, you’ll focus on designing computers and will work in the world of ones and zeroes, the two numbers of boolean logic and base-two arithmetic. You’ll need to think just like a computer to make sure you design, program, and test things properly! The benefit? Putting all kinds of computing power in the hands of people.
- Telecommunications and Satellites: Enjoy the idea of sending information over the air, even bouncing it off of satellites in space? Then this is for you! Includes mobile devices, communication towers and satellite dishes, for sharing speech, data, location, etc..
- Programmable Circuits and AI: If you’ve been fortunate enough to work with a small programmable circuit platform like Arduino® or Raspberry Pi® or others, then you understand that you can assemble relatively-inexpensive existing hardware (circuit boards and parts that you can easily buy) and load them up with programs you write to get them to do crazy and useful things! Artificial Intelligence (AI) may help you explore new frontiers.
- Power Generation, Transmission, and Power Electronics: Here you generate power (maybe with solar, wind, natural gas, nuclear, etc.), get that power to where it will be used, and then with transformers and power electronics, you can adjust the electricity to have just the right voltage, current, power, frequency, etc.
- Biomedical instruments and Tools: Design and build equipment specifically meant to interact safely with people to help them. Imagine enabling someone to monitor their blood glucose level real-time with your new instrument, or designing a surgical tool to save lives!
- Robotics and Electromechanical Devices: Get robots moving to do awesome things. Check out online videos to see the latest robots run and do side flips! What for? You get to decide on that, too. Work alongside mechanical engineers.
- Rotating Machinery (motors and generators): A staple of the EE industry, these things keep our lights on and our wheels turning. Motors keep getting more and more efficient. We need alternatives to the existing ones, if electric vehicles are to replace internal combustion engines, namely, electric motors that use less rare-earth minerals.
- Signals and Systems: When you need a signal, like someone’s voice, to be cleaned up, then understanding how electrical signals change with time is vital to having a good conversation! Some details include what frequencies make up those signals, what noise you need to remove, and how to best do the job. These systems work when signals pass through them, so both are important together.
- Energy Conversion and Storage: Energy can come from many different sources, like the wind, the sun, chemical combustion, etc., but electrical engineers aim to provide electricity, and conversion is the answer. Since we don’t always need electricity when we generate it, we need to store it, too, such as in battery systems.
- Electronic Circuits and Instruments: This is a big area of EE. Electronic circuits involve connections of different components, such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, relays, switches, transistors, and more. An electronic instrument depends on at least one circuit, and likely many, to operate and someone (you?) needs to design the whole thing.
Endnotes:
- Issue 13: From Struggling with Math to Becoming an Electrical Engineer: Johnathon Street’s Inspiring Journey
The noun electrician dates back to the 1600’s and comes from the Greek and Latin word meaning “resembling amber.” Some of the first observed electrical phenomena were related to amber. Today, an electrician is someone who works on the wiring inside and around buildings and transmission lines. Both a BSEE degree and an electrician’s credentials take roughly the same number of years to earn and are separate endeavors.
For more on the history of electricity, check out resources like this video series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_Awe%3A_The_Story_of_Electricity
The convention of assigning a negative (-) charge to electrons is credited to Benjamin Franklin.
- https://gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/eu2-2-using-electricity-to-do-work/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI0pGk0MMhg
- MIT likes to use the Latin scientiae baccalaureus (SB) instead of the more common Bachelor of Science (BS). They are the same degree.
- If you’re curious to learn more about any of these, you may wish to go to the online course catalogs of the various colleges and universities with programs in EE. There, you can find these topics under the course listings, read about them, and see how the courses are described. Then, a web trip to places like wikipedia and others may help you learn more about the jargon you’ll see. Beyond that, we can recommend that you reach out to an EE or a college professor and ask them questions! You can also look into student activities at www.ieee.org (even see “join as a student”).
We value your input! Have questions about this issue or want to know more about our foundation?
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