Leah Ridgway
Leah is passionate about sharing her love of engineering with anyone who’ll listen.
She's investigating how we can teach engineering better and keen to explain what engineers *actually* do.
Location Liverpool & Nottingham, UK
Activity
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Leah Ridgway replied to Betty Mac
The way I usually describe it:
Electronic Engineering is all about information, so it covers computer chips, communications systems and protocols. (This side edges towards computer science)
Electrical Engineering is all about the big things, so it's about electricity generation and distribution, motors and moving things. (This side edges towards...
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Leah Ridgway replied to James Pellechi
I'm going out for Halloween tonight dressed at Lt. Uhura - isn't life full of coincidences? :)
LLAP James
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Leah Ridgway made a comment
A big thank you to everyone who's taken part in the course, providing feedback and helping each other to learn. This has been a steep learning curve for us since it's our first mooc and it's great that people have got something out of it.
The course mentors and our e-learning team have done a great job - thanks all :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Anthony Moulder
We'll definitely look at doing this if we run the course again to accommodate more people's learning styles.
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It's a "taster" so of course we're going to suggest the wonderful University of Liverpool if you wanted to go further ;)
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Seriously though, pretty much all the moocs I've done have had info for where you can go to take the content further.
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I live with someone who seems unable to put CDs back in their boxes and leaves them on the table *shudder*. CDs have been able to withstand this kind of behaviour better than vinyl as the smallest scratch alters the sound.
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CDs are a bit better able to withstand damage than vinyl in my experience :)
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I got really frustrated when Radio 4 did a "can you hear the difference in HD?" segment on You and Yours (a consumer program) - listening on the FM radio in my car meant that obviously I couldn't hear any difference and a lot of people would have been in the same situation!
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jeff Armstrong
Designing a op-amp from transistors is still used as a computer design exercise for Year 2 students at Liverpool :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Ronald Young
It's not a very practical circuit I agree, but the idea is to demonstrate how a transistor works to people who have never seen one before.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Terence McMahon
It's a fascinating topic, and generally when you get to degree level you can't separate out subjects into electronics/physics/chemistry like you can at school as they all feed into each other here.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Stephen Roesner
Getting beyond 2D is so difficult. This is why I have different coloured tennis balls in my campus classes to help students remember that it's all 3D.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Muhammad Qaisar NIsar
Apologies if you find my language slightly confusing. Yes, current flows through a component not across it. However I hope the bigger picture is still clear.
We haven't covered voltage and current sources as that's beyond the introductory scope of this course (and generally the first time you introduce undergrad students to the models they grimace!)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Andrew Hamilton
Yes, it's just for scale.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Ian Groves
I love going out to schools and explaining that engineers aren't all about hard hats and spanners. Even a simple thing like building a roller coaster for a marble out of paper can get kids buzzing.
As for university classes, it varies with the styles of different lecturers - some people give great and inspiring "chalk and talk" classes, whereas I'll go for...
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Leah Ridgway made a comment
Oh my word. That is a *bad* image of me! Gormless much?
On the other hand, that is my favourite t-shirt!
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In the final week we talk more about where you can go from here if you want to build things on a hobby level. Hackspaces are amazing places to share ideas and get help from other people with the same passion. List of hackspaces here: http://www.hackspace.org.uk/view/Main_Page
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Leah Ridgway replied to William Devitt
I do all my own manicures ;)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jeff Armstrong
What did you study Jeff?
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Leah Ridgway replied to Richard Jennings
Oooooh, I like this idea. Particularly for elderly people in rural areas who can't drive any more; it has the potential to lessen their isolation.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jack Taylor
I think that's a great idea, but I do wonder how the people would respond to them, given that the BBC were reporting that people in Africa were shocked by the medical workers in protective gear!
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Leah Ridgway replied to John Waterman
We could say that Earth is the only planet in our solar system inhabited by anything other than robots (as far as we know) ;)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jakub Kunčák
I've corrected this now, thanks for highlighting it.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Daniel McVicker
Take off and landing are two times where a lot of variables can change and so humans are still better at handling them.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Guido Muller
There are some fascinating debates going on worldwide about the laws apply to robotics - not just Asimov's Laws!
"Should we extend Legal Rights to Social Robots?"
http://io9.com/5941701/should-we-extend-legal-rights-to-social-robotsAnd Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Three_Laws_of_Robotics.html -
You have understood, it's low voltage as in "below" a certain threshold in practice so there is still a voltage. The circuits later on will work because we tend to use logic for control circuits rather than for delivering large amounts of electrical power.
There's the old adage that for an electrical engineer, low voltage is anything below 50V... for an...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Keith Cornelius
There's now a pdf download on step 4.4 :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to David Hodkinson
Yes, you can order logic gates with different functions. However from there it gets interesting.... It's beyond the scope of this course, but you can make all of the other logic functions by using NAND gates connected together or NOR gates connected together (known as universal gates)! There's a nice simple article here that explains this:...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Ian Webb
There's now one at the start of the week to download.
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We're looking into where it's gone. Sorry for the inconvenience
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jeff Armstrong
Have a look at this video if you want to see them working (and not working!)... it's not an easy task for Year 1 students:
http://youtu.be/QwciE_ukU64?t=54s -
Here's one in action!
http://youtu.be/QwciE_ukU64?t=54s(It isn't a trivial task to get them working to follow the line (particularly since I was mean and set the blue line challenge) as you'll see from the video. The test day was also an example for the need to field test, as loads of these worked fine in the lab and not on the day...)
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Soooooon! ;)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Thomas Chan
Yes, you've got it :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Stewart Stanil
Yes I could have used the other symbol set, however I went for the distinctive shapes as I think it makes learning easier if you're a beginner.
For anyone who's interested in further reading on the rectangular symbols there's a nice chapter in Digital Design Principles and Practices here: http://www.ddpp.com/DDPP3_pdf/IEEEsyms.pdf
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Leah Ridgway replied to Peter Trueman
I nearly sad it! (I think I do at some point later on if it made the final cut :) )
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Leah Ridgway replied to David Hodkinson
Yes David, you're correct.
Logic is a bit difficult to get your head around at first and everyone will have a slightly different way of thinking about it that works for them. That's why I've put in the truth table, circuit symbol and switch analogy to try and help out.
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If you look at rock beds in the earth you can see magnetic "stripes" from where the north and south poles have flipped in the planets' history - it's very cool!
(Sorry I wasn't around last week - I was all the poorly)
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The symbol for current is I, which originates from the French phrase "intensité de courant", which means "current intensity" in English. Remember that Ampere who defined all of this was French.
c is already used for the speed of light (from the Latin for speed "celeritas").
C is already used for Capacitance. -
The order's been changed, as we developed the course, this was originally week 3 - sorry for any confusion.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Kay Head
My pound shop fairy lights are definitely connected in series! I guess I got what I paid for...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Tom Poskitt
I've kept the numbers simple so yes, the values are unrealistic. The course is attempting to keep the maths light, which is why we made this choice :)
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Leah Ridgway made a comment
Some fantastic discussions here; really interesting to read your experiences and thoughts.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Gary Friedlander
If I get a chance this weekend I'll do a short youtube video in a little more detail :)
The super-short version is that if you have a charged conductor, the charges will all want to repel each other so they spread as far away from each-other as they can - that means onto the surface.This is then the basis for how we can build capacitors that store...
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Leah Ridgway replied to hamid sharifi
Yes, current acts instantaneously when you switch on a light for example.
The idea of current flowing through the resistors is a simple model to help beginners (if you are not a beginner and know more then that's fine, but imagine your knowledge at age 16 or if this is not your area of expertise) because it can be easily compared to water in pipes. This is...
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Leah Ridgway replied to hamid sharifi
Both of us are correct (sorry!) depends what level you look at it:
I have used the current passing through each resistor in turn as it is a simple way of visualising and understanding the way the circuit works.
At an atomic level the current is a bit like a circle of pipe filled with water and no exits; you turn on the tap and the water goes around and...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Malcolm Day
Pet hate: American engineering text books that state questions with imperial units and then the first step is converting to metric, then doing the calculation, then converting back to imperial for the final answer. Just why?!
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Leah Ridgway replied to Gary Friedlander
Yes, assume everything is perfect at the moment, resistance is up very soon!
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Leah Ridgway replied to William Devitt
Yes, atoms are fixed within a material and it's the electrons that move.
As a rule of thumb, if you're looking at anything larger than an electron we say that current flows from positive to negative.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Les Wise
Probably for the same reason that in the UK we haven't switched to driving on the right like the rest of Europe and most of the world; it would cause chaos when the switch first happens!
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Leah Ridgway replied to Andrew Matthew
In a p-type material charge is carried via the "lack of an electron" which can be confusing, hence the idea of using the imaginary charge carrier of a hole.
A lot of electrical and electronic engineers haven't looked at chemistry since age 16, so holes are used to help them understand - if you know more chemistry and/or are happy with the idea of the "lack...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Gary Friedlander
Yep, lecture 1 of any university course - charge is on the surface of a conductor.
However for the purposes of the course to help people understand (think of water flowing through a pipe analogy) we've simplified it.
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Yes, you are correct. Transformer is in common use to describe "the black box" of the laptop cable but it is only part of the system.
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I never quite "get" how people don't like wind-farms but will tolerate pylons and even telephone cables - they all alter the landscape.
I think offshore wind does help to strike more of a balance.
I also remember holidaying in France as a child and being amazed by their nuclear power stations - I'd only ever seen the power stations with the massive...
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There's also a lot of research into making capacitors more efficient so they can store the energy from solar power in the day and release it later on:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/01/3792075.htm -
That's fascinating :) If I had solar panels and a smart meter I think I would get a little OCD about trying to make my supply and demand balance!
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Thanks for the link Charles - I'm going to challenge my on campus students to have a go.
If energy costs continue to rise I think more people will consider having their own turbines/solar panels etc. however the other side of the coin is that planning rules will need to be relaxed to allow this (speaking from a UK prospective).
Personally I'd be happy if...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Ian Groves
I was living in China when the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan happened. The following week the news was reporting that the building of nuclear plants had been shelved and they'd build more coal powered stations instead.
There's no easy answer, but yes, we do need to look at it on a global scale and need governments to act according to scientific...
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We'll be talking about energy load forecasting a little bit later this week :)
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You can think of a capacitor (a circuit component that has capacitance) as being a "fast discharge battery" so a camera flash is based around a capacitor as this can supply the power to the bulb in the time needed.
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Plus I'm dyslexic and the meter/metre thing always trips me up (spell-check is a lifesaver!)
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Thanks for helping out with the explanations Martti - very much appreciated.
When making the course it was difficult to work out what we could include due to time - I wanted to include so much more.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jim Dean
Yes, "conventional" current is in the opposite direction from electron flow. The rule of thumb is that if you're not talking about current at the electron level, assume positive to negative current flow :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Helen Banh
It's great to ask the deep questions of "why is this the way it is?" and if we had more time it would be good to explore in more depth, however we have to skim the surface here so we can then use this information to make things happen.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Jim Hough
Ah the centrifugal/centripetal debate - many arguments with non-scientists/engineers over this one. Jim, you are absolutely correct that it's centripetal force, but go easy on Micheal :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Mike Howell
I think that would be great to add if we get to develop the course more in future.
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Leah Ridgway replied to James Green
Nuclear is always controversial and has a lot of emotions attached to people's views of it. Sellafield is not too far from Liverpool and they spend a lot of research energy into the safe storage of waste - if we could solve that problem for good then I think nuclear would have a lot more support.
One of my friends once said "Homer Simpson has a lot to...
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Leah Ridgway replied to Liam McEvoy
That's a great topic, but it's beyond the scope of what we'll cover here. The "chips" in modern car keys make the whole system a lot more secure than traditional keys.
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I have been known to press the button and pretend I'm a wizard as the car unlocks ;)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Helen Banh
But if we know how those components interact we can "see" how it does all go together :)
A lot of basic electronics can be explained using mechanical analogies which can help our understanding.
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Leah Ridgway replied to Gordon Wainwright
The course is aimed at anyone aged 16+ so you might find some of the topics simplified. It's a taster, but please, feel free to discuss in more depth in the comments :)
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Leah Ridgway replied to Ian Webb
Sorry all, we're tied into the format by Futurelearn. I will find out if there's anything we can do to improve the transcripts.
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Thank you!
It's interesting to see how attitudes towards people having piercings and tattoos have really changed over the last 10 years. It's fantastic to work in a field where I'm judged on my ability and not on my appearance. -
Leah Ridgway made a comment
Welcome everyone :) So excited to be getting started - we've been working on the course for months in the background. Hope you enjoy it and learn something too
