Discovering Electricity

We saw lots of colourful lights at the Christmas market on Friday.

In class we have already had a discussion about how to stay safe around electricity.

Today we learned lots more about electricity.

We found out that there are three types of electricity: mains (plug in) electricity, batteries and static electricity.

We were able to classify which familiar items use mains electricity, or batteries, or both.

We talked again about how to stay safe around electricity.

We used balloons to generate static electricity (best done with our hair or with teacher’s woolly jumper), and then used these balloons to get tissue snakes and shapes to float!

Next we learned a lot about circuits and circuit symbols.  We lit bulbs using two wires a battery and a bulb, and then one wire a battery and a bulb.  We also used Bright Sparks 4 Kids kits to try out our various questions:

Can we made a circuit and get a bulb to light, or a buzzer to sound, or a motor to twist?

Can we add a switch?

Does it matter which wires go in which direction?

What happens to the bulb/buzzer/motor if we add more than one battery?

How many batteries will it take to light an LED lamp?

How many batteries will it take to light two LED lamps?

What will happen if a battery is upside down?