Misunderstood –
In the Electrical Engineering field, it’s easy for students to get confused with “Power” and “Energy” as in real life people commonly link “power” or “powerful” to “the ability to do work”. However, in the electrical context, “Energy” is more closely related to this ability as it indicates “how much work a load can do” while “Power” means ”how fast a load can do the work”. Meanwhile, large “Energy” does not necessarily mean high “Power”. To be more specific, a resistor in a circuit will dissipate heat (“Energy”) at some rate (“Power”), and this phenomenon can be mathematically expressed as “Power=Energy/Time”.
One analogy to these two concepts is the scenario of “one kid eats a smaller cake faster than an adult eats a larger cake”. In this case, the kid consumes less “Energy” than the adult does while he/she has more “Power”. This analogy is a plain one that can be easily understood by students from different backgrounds. The key point here is students should discard the intuition developed from the common life and focus on the concepts in the professional field.
To explain these two concepts smoothly, I will write the formula, give the example above, draw a circuit with elements indicated by numbers, do the calculations to demonstrate the “Energy” and “Power” of different loads.
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