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VCE Systems Engineering Unit 1 — Electrotechnological systems design · Stage 6

Weeks 2-4 · How electrotechnology got here, and what it costs

Explain how one line of electrotechnological development unfolded, and weigh the impacts of a component choice.

VCE-SE-U1-O1

Open this deck on the projector and press F for full-screen. N toggles speaker notes. The accompanying teacher guide is at /curriculum/vce-systems-engineering-unit-1/teacher/lessons/2.

Before this lesson:

Decide which development line you are teaching before the lesson. Depth in one beats a survey of five.

intention 2 min

How electrotechnology got here, and what it costs

Explain how one line of electrotechnological development unfolded, and weigh the impacts of a component choice.

Decide which development line you are teaching before the lesson. Depth in one beats a survey of five.

concept 10 min

What we're covering

  • Build a timeline for one line of development, annotated with what each step made possible.
  • Choose a single component from your kit and follow it from raw material to disposal.
  • Compare two components that do the same job across cost, energy, lifespan and what happens at end of life. Present the comparison as a table with your sources.
  • Write a short position on which you would specify and why, naming which impacts you weighted most heavily.
  • Trace one line of development in depth rather than skimming several. The silicon chip works well: valve, transistor, integrated circuit, microcontroller — with the point being that each step made systems smaller, cheaper and more numerous. Telecommunications works equally well if your students prefer it.
  • Land the consequence: the reason a student can afford to put a microcontroller in a school project at all is a hundred years of that development.
  • Move to impacts. Take one component the students will actually use and follow it: where the materials come from, how it is made, how it is shipped, what happens when it is thrown away.
  • Run a lifecycle comparison of two components that do the same job — an incandescent lamp against an LED, or aluminium against copper. Students collect the numbers rather than being given them.
  • Draw out social, environmental and economic impacts as three separate lenses, and make students say which lens they are using when they make a claim.
  • Connect it back to the brief: the system they build will itself have impacts, and those belong in their evaluation.
check 5 min

Quick check

I can compare two components across social, environmental and economic impacts, using numbers I found myself.

Students treat 'sustainable' as a property a component either has or does not. Push them to ask: compared to what, measured how, over what lifetime.

reflect 5 min

Before you pack up

Which impact did you weight most heavily in your recommendation, and would a different user weight it differently?

Annotated timeline; the lifecycle comparison table with sources; the written position.

End of lesson 2

That's it.

Tomorrow / next lesson: Components, symbols and circuits.

Teacher guide Next lesson's deck → All decks