Teaching electrical safety in engineering (or how to avoid electrocution)

Abstract

Perhaps the most dangerous, life threatening situations are those that are invisible, and emit no warning signs; yet we live and work around these every day. In many engineering programs, this subject is assumed to be "covered somewhere", or at least understood based on covered theory. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Through surveying many engineering seniors and graduate students on topics in electrical safety, it was found that most have little to no knowledge of a relatively simple, but extremely important topic, i.e., electrical safety. This is especially true in disciplines other than electrical engineering, e.g., mechanical, civil, industrial, etc. There is a basic set of life saving questions that everyone (even nonengineers) should be able to answer, both theoretically and practically. The purpose of this paper is to answer some key questions, present some theory, and introduce some practical interactive demos that teachers can use in their class to drive home this most important aspect of electrical safety.