Energy
Energy is a topic that permeates all the others in the subject. It affects everything
that we do every moment of every day and therefore it is important that you learn to understand, identify and calculate energy in some of its many forms. When you have completed this unit of work you should be able to: • understand and identify the many ways that energy affects our lives • describe the environmental implications of using or producing certain forms of energy • identify different forms of renewable energy sources • perform calculations to determine how much energy is present in a system • produce systems diagrams to show energy transformations • determine how efficient an energy system is. |
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Electronics & Control
Digital LogicElectronic circuits can be use to control a huge variety of systems but in each case there are INPUTS,
PROCESSES and OUTPUTS. In this section we are going to focus on some of the components that form the PROCESSES. The ones we will look at are know as digital logic gates. Digital means a device can either be on or off. We often refer to this as ‘1’ or ‘0’ or ‘High’ and ‘Low’ 1 = On = High 0 = Off = Low Analogue Electronics
Electricity is one of the most important forms of energy available to man. It affects everyone’s lives
in many ways. If you take time to think about your everyday life you will realise that our lives are full of devices that depend upon electricity. These devices depend on the electrical circuits inside them to work. The circuits often change the electrical energy into other forms of energy such as heat, light and sound. In this area of study you will learn how these circuits work and about the different components within them. |
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Mechanical Systems and StructuresSystemsTechnology influences all our lives so much that there is hardly a thing that is not affected by it. We
take the term ‘technology’ to mean the things or products made by our society. In our modern world there are so many new products being created that it is impossible for us to keep up and know everything about these developments. As technologists we need some help to use and understand all this technology. The strategy we use is called the top-down approach. Here we limit the study of technology to what we need to know. For example, to use a toaster all we need to know is that if we plug it in, set the temperature, switch it on and insert a slice of bread then, after a few minutes, we will get toast. However, an engineer designing a new toaster will need to know a lot more and will have an understanding of all the parts that go to make up the toaster and how they relate to one another. In order to simplify the difficulties of dealing with complex devices and machines, a method of analysis called the systems approach has been developed. It is based on the concept that any technological design or device can be described as a system and that this system can be split into smaller parts or sub-systems. Each sub-system deals with the function of a particular part of the design or device. |
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Programmable Control
Many devices have been developed to make life easier (eg a mobile phones,
cars, robotic systems), to make life safer (eg traffic lights, flood barriers), to help with work (for example a computer) and for entertainment purposes (eg games consoles or tvs) Some of these devices are purely electronic. However, many of these devices also control mechanisms (for example the eject mechanism in a DVD player) and so can be described as mechatronic devices. However, both electronic and mechatronic devices all have one thing in common – an electronic control system. |
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