Abstract :
Engineering educators have had to rely increasingly on theoretical models that represent broad abstract relationships or laws which preserve their validity despite technological change. Carefully produced films afford the opportunity to relate the abstract with the real world and to assist the instructor in presenting material to his students that he could, only with great difficulty, produce himself. Under a grant awarded by the National Science Foundation, the National Committee for Electrical Engineering Films (NCEEF) has completed or has in production films on a) fields, forces, and matter, b) traveling waves on transmission lines, c) harmonic phasors, d) linearity, and e) antenna and radiation patterns. Additionally, films on electrical instruments, computers, modulation transients, and stroboscopic techniques are in the planning stages. The Committee has also sponsored a compilation with reviews of existing films. Because of the difficulty of visualizing electric and magnetic fields, and circuit quantities such as voltage, current, charge, etc., the NCEEF has sponsored a conference and produced a film on computer animation of motion pictures, which will consist essentially of excerpts from existing films of both industrial and educational organizations. As a result of the work of the Committee, there now exists a coordinated national effort designed by electrical engineering educators to produce films which will serve as useful adjuncts to electrical engineering education.
