Students in Thomas Mellin’s Engineering Essentials class at Mahopac High School have been busy learning the fundamentals of circuit design and electrical engineering through hands-on projects.
For their first assignment, students worked in teams building standard circuits using breadboards, resistors, LED lights, push-button switches, slide switches and connecting wires. Once they mastered the basics, Mellin challenged them to design more complex circuits incorporating LED lights and buzzers, encouraging creativity and collaboration along the way.
Using breadboards allows students to connect components across numbered rows and columns, helping them visualize how current flows through a circuit.
“Breadboarding is an important first step of prototyping,” Mellin said. “It might seem difficult at first, but the students who ask questions and troubleshoot problems tend to master concepts more quickly.”
Next, students will advance to programming micro:bits, integrating LEDs, push-button switches, sensors and speakers, a step that combines coding and circuitry to bring their projects to life.
