A Motivating Experience for Learning Alternaing Current

This paper describes a proposal for teaching the concept of alternating current. While carrying out the task, the active participation of students will be encouraged. The teaching strategies will be directed to promote active learning, motivating curiosity and experimentation. In this way, students will establish more solid relationships between theory and practice. With this objective in mind, common elements and instruments currently used in a laboratory of electronics will be used to teach the relationship between perceptible effects and the mathematic model which describes alternating current. From the wave´s observable characteristics, students will be able to find the relationship with the image display by the oscilloscope. Other new technical concepts will also be introduced, such as noise, signal, distortion and link. Once the student has interpreted these concepts, he will be able to understand the most relevant parameters of an electric signal. This paper will argue not only the importance of this learning methodology, in which students are in charge of their own discoveries but also the relevance of this kind of practical activities in the training of future engineers. During the years in which this methodology was incorporated, students showed higher motivation in learning and were also able to make interesting hypothesis and elaborate more accurate conclusions.