Hannah's Build-It
Circuits
A 5E Lesson on Circuits and Electricity
Engagement
Exploration
Explaination
Get your students' attention with a story! Here is one specific to circuits and the exploration activity below.
First ask students why they wear helmets, then continue into the story. "I was on my own exploring, spelunking in a cave and had a helmet on with a little light on the front. I hear a strange noise ahead of me and when I turned to see what it was I hit my light on the rock and broke it! I was in total darkness but could locate a wire, then a bulb, a battery, and then a second wire."
Now it's your turn! Each student will get a battery, 2 wires, and a small light bulb and are tasked to make the light bulb illuminate to fix their lamp in the cave!
Did they get it with 2 wires? If so... Oh NO! They lost one of the wires and must now try to do it with only one, this will be challenging.
Maybe some things aren't working? Have students write those down to eliminate possible solutions. If something is getting hot they may be getting closer to a solution! Have them draw diagrams along the way and make predictions.
Solution to 1 Wire
Solution to 2 Wires
So How's It Work?
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Conductors-materials electrons can pass through. For example: metal, water, etc.
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Insulators- what electrons cannot pass through. Ex: rubber, glass, etc.
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Battery- Charges electrons and provides energy.
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Light bulb- object that produces light from electricity.
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Switch- the barrier between open and closed circuits. It can open and close a circuit by flipping it.
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Closed circuit- a full circular path for electrons to travel.
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Open circuit- incomplete circular path, therefore electrons cannot pass through.
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Short circuit- a full circular path, although it does not travel through any device and in result concentrates heat in one area.
The simple answer for students is that the circuit requires a charge from the battery, and a conductor(the wire) connecting it to the device(the bulb), in order to make a full circuit! Have students talk about what worked and what didn't, this will help you in return to explain the kinds of circuits: open, short, and closed. To the right is a small glossary to explain terms and how they apply to the lesson.
A closed circuit
An incomplete circuit
Expansion
To further my learning with circuits, I played with the Snap Circuits SC-300 Electronics Discovery Kit across about a week and a half on my own, by checking one out from the library.
Below are several different projects I made with the kit, some projects have videos as well to show you how they work!
Evaluation
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Select a project from the booklet and describe what pieces represent the following: conductor, insulator, switch, open circuit, closed circuit, short circuit, and battery. If whatever item you tried to build didn’t work the first time, what did you check/do to fix it?
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Example: When building the musical doorbell the conductor was the metal snaps, the insulator was the plastic, the switch was both the button switch and traditional switch, the open circuit occurs when the snaps don’t all connect to each working piece, the closed circuit occurs when the project is complete, the short circuit occurs if the batter is only directly connected to itself, and lastly the battery is shown by the battery pack. I noticed if I forgot even one snap the project would not work, as it was an open circuit, the only way to make it work is if all the pieces are connected.
Some of the projects have variations to them to change up sounds, or functions. Do one of these variations and see the difference it has on your project!