Higher

Topics and skills covered in the course include:

Engineering contexts and challenges – types of engineering and engineering projects, economic, social and environmental impacts of engineering; emerging technologies; energy and efficiency.
Systems and control – the systems approach to engineering; energy systems; open and closed loop control; two state control; proportional control incorporating negative feedback.
Electronic systems – analogue electronics, including Ohm’s law, Kirchoff’s laws, resistors in series and parallel, electrical power, voltage dividers, and transistor switching circuits, including BJT and MOSFET functions, transistors as drivers, op-amp functions and circuit design; digital electronics including logic circuits (AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR), truth tables, Boolean expressions and NAND equivalents; microcontrollers including high-level programming techniques (including pulse width modulation, ramping, incremental counts and other logic operations).
Mechanical systems– motion and forces; mechanisms and drive systems; pneumatic systems (including cascading, group air and electrical control); beams and frame structures; and material properties (including analysis of test results).

Higher is assessed by completing an engineering assignment worth 40% of the final mark. The remaining 60% is assessed by a written examination.

Expectations

Engineering Science is recommended as a pupil choice along with Mathematics, Physics and/or Computing Science – it should not be seen as a replacement for other science subjects.
Strong skills in Mathematics are required to succeed in Engineering Science.
There will be regular past paper question homework.
Meeting deadlines and being resilient are important features of being successful in this course – you will be expected to carry out tasks in your own time.
For entry to Higher, pupils will normally have a National 5 pass at grades A-C.

Pupils can access all the notes for this course on Glow within the Engineering Science Microsoft Team. You can find the course plan below.

Eyemouth High School