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Using GeoGebra to Enhance Student Understanding of Phasor Diagrams in AC Circuits Courses

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Conference

2019 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Location

California State University, Los Angeles , California

Publication Date

April 4, 2019

Start Date

April 4, 2019

End Date

April 6, 2019

Conference Session

PSW Section Meeting Papers - Disregard start and end time - for online paper access only

Tagged Topic

Pacific Southwest Section Meeting Paper Submissions

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--31849

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/31849

Download Count

1943

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Paper Authors

biography

Siddharth Vyas California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo

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Siddharth Vyas is a full-time lecturer of Electrical Engineering at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in circuits and electronics. He received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Instrumentation at the Medicaps Institute of Technology and Management, Indore, India, and an MS in Electrical Engineering (Electrophysics) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia. His research interests include applications of magnetic particles in medicine and biology, engineering education, and diversity in engineering education.

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Ali Dehghan-Banadaki California Polytechnic State Uni.

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Ali O. Shaban California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

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Professor Shaban received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University in 1985. He joined the Electrical Engineering Department at Cal Poly in 1984. Since 1985, Dr. Shaban has done consulting work with San Diego Gas & Electric, Chevron,Southern California Edison,JPL Scientific, and Bluepoint Associates, Ltd., in San Luis Obispo. Dr. Shaban's field of interest is electric machines, power quality, power systems analysis, and power systems protection. He has published in the areas of synchronous machines, induction motor, reliability,and power quality. He is a senior member of the IEEE and PES.

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Abstract

Using GeoGebra to Enhance Student Understanding of Phasor Diagrams in AC Circuits Courses Siddharth Vyas, Ali Dehghan Banadaki, and Ali Shaban

Understanding, drawing, and interpreting phasor diagrams is an essential skill for electrical and mechanical engineers. Phasor diagrams are an important graphical tool that can be used to easily solve AC circuits that could sometimes be rather difficult to solve using mathematical equations. However, undergraduate electrical and mechanical engineering students continue to struggle with the concepts of phasor diagrams largely because of a lack of an easy to use and freely available drawing tool. Traditional lectures on phasor diagrams have relied on the use of pencil, eraser, graph paper, ruler, compass, and protractor. In addition to being difficult to use, the combined use of these tools is rapidly getting obsolete in the modern engineering world where simulation environments have almost entirely replaced physical drawing tools. This paper presents the use of GeoGebra an easy to use and freely available online drawing tool to teach phasor diagrams to undergraduate electrical and mechanical engineering students. The use of GeoGebra in teaching Statics and Mechanics course topics has been published and appreciated. This paper will present the use of GeoGebra in drawing phasor diagrams of AC circuits containing resistors, capacitors, and inductors. A distinct and important advantage of the use of GeoGebra in drawing phasor diagrams over paper drawn phasor diagrams is that GeoGebra allows the student to manipulate the phasor diagrams to test their conceptual understanding.

Vyas, S., & Dehghan-Banadaki, A., & Shaban, A. O. (2019, April), Using GeoGebra to Enhance Student Understanding of Phasor Diagrams in AC Circuits Courses Paper presented at 2019 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting, California State University, Los Angeles , California. 10.18260/1-2--31849

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