Throughout the unit, students assume the role of medical equipment technicians undergoing training. To prepare for their first Milestone, students explore their own ideas about circuits and electricity. Visiting a clinical engineer or biomedical equipment technician at a local hospital, they learn about the function and operation of the defibrillator. They build and diagram different circuits. And they study The American National Standard for Cardiac Defibrillator Devices.
Students then tackle their first Milestone.
They write about the uses, safety features, and main components of the defibrillator and identify the complex systems of its inputs and outputs. To achieve the second Milestone, students begin to investigate the function of different components in a circuit. For example, to examine the role of the battery, students experiment with electron transfer between metals, build cells with different pairs of metals, and measure how voltage varies with different batteries over time. Milestone Two presents a motivating opportunity for consolidation, application, and assessment. Students establish criteria for choosing the most appropriate battery for their defibrillator model weighing variables such as voltage, cost, and rate of discharge.