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While resistors may seem rather pointless at first, they end up being extremely valuable electrical/electronic components. If asked, you may cite several uses of resistors in circuits: • To limit maximum circuit current to a safe value. • To “split” a voltage into proportions.

In most sciences, realistic experiments are much more difficult and expensive to set up than electrical circuits. Nuclear physics, biology, geology, and chemistry professors would just love to be able to have their students apply advanced mathematics to real experiments posing no safety hazard and costing less than a textbook.

The same may be said for calculus concepts as well: basic principles of derivative and integral (with respect to time) may be easily applied to capacitor and inductor circuits, providing students with an accessible context in which these otherwise abstract concepts may be grasped. But calculus is a topic for later worksheet questions . . .

Notes: Beginning students often find the terminology for switches confusing, because the words open and closed sound similar to the terminology used for doors, but do not mean quite the same thing when used in reference to a switch! In order to help avoid confusion, ask the students how they may think of these terms in a way that is consistent with their meaning in the context of an electrical ...