BUILD IT WEBSITE
Alyssa Scarfato
PROJECT NINE:
BATTERIES AND BULBS
ENGAGEMENT
Imagine someone has left you in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with only a few items: two wires, a battery, and a lightbulb. Your biggest concern is seeing where you are. "Make the lightbulb work", you think. But how? How can you possibly make a lightbulb work with only these three items?
Here's how:
For this section of the 5E Lesson Plan, it's important to use some kind of hook to get your audience interested in and curious about what you are talking about. Things like stories, videos, or hooks like that are great ideas!
EXPLANATION
EXPLORATION
For this specific activity, we were given two wires, a battery, and a small lightbulb. The object was simple: make the lightbulb light up. However, this challenge really proved to be difficult. My partner and I understood that the wires had to touch either ends of the battery and touch some part of the lightbulb, but where and why? It took a lot of guessing and hints from Jeff Goodman, but we finally made it light up. The lightbulb needed the wire to touch two different areas of it, as well as the wires touching both ends of the battery.
First, we had to explore our options with the materials we were given: two wires, a battery, and a lightbulb. How could we make it light up? We took previous knowledge of needing a closed circuit, which is a complete circular circuit- all ends are touching, and nothing is left out of the circle. We knew that each wire had to touch each end of the battery, and that the other ends of the wire had to touch an end of the lightbulb, but which?
The battery contains both a positive and negative side, and both need to be in the circuit in order to make the lightbulb turn on. The lightbulb contains filament, and two ares where the wires must touch it- the bottom of the lightbulb and the metallic part below the bulb.
As explained above, this particular activity contains a closed circuit which is a complete circle of electricity. This circuit also contained metal, which is a conductor. A conductor is something that transmits heat and electricity (in this case, it allows electricity to pass through). In contrast, an insulator does not allow for electricity to pass through it and even gets in the way of electricity.
VOCABULARY
The battery acted as an electricity pump and powerhouse, giving off energy and electricity through the wires and to the lightbulb. A switch much like the light switches in your house, open and close circuits of electricity. A circuit breaker is a switch that detects too much electricity and cuts off all power to prevent anything catching on fire or overheating because of an overuse of power.
VOCABULARY
A short circuit is a closed circuit that does not travel completely through the device. An open circuit is an incomplete circuit. If a closed circuit has a complete and open circle, an open circuit is left incomplete.
VOCABULARY
EXPANSION
EVALUATION
For this activity, we were instructed to explore a snap circuit kit in the library. I chose a kit called "littleBits Electronics Deluxe Kit". This kit is pretty simply designed, and I chose it because I plan on working with pretty young children in my classroom some day, so this kit seemed more reasonable for my future students to use.
This kit does not have a whole lot of options to make a series of circuits with, but it is super easy to use and create circuits. The pieces are magnetic and connect easily and are labelled well, explaining what each piece is and what it does.
I have used this kit before in a previous class (CI 3750 with Mary Ferrell) from 9:30 to 10:45 am on Tuesday March 28th. I also went to the IMC and used this kit from 11 am to 12 pm on Thursday April 20th to create more circuits and take more pictures of my processes.
To the left is a review from a customer who bought this kit a few years ago. I thought it was really neat that they boguht this specific kit for their daughter to get her more into engineering because she had labelled it as something "only boys like". Because of the design and packaging of this kit, she began to love it and found that engineering is something anyone can do. I just found this to be super uplifting. Check it out for yourself!
A good evaluation for students for this specific activity would be a creative writing assignment with prompts, such as
Your friends and family don't understand how a lightbulb works. Draw a diagram, and then explain to them how a lightbulb is powered, and how it works.
One stormy night, you wake up to a thunderstorm, and the power goes out. Your parents can't get the repairman on the phone, so they ask you how a circuit works and if you can fix the power in your house. Write a paragraph about how circuits are made and how they are powered, and how you would fix the power outage.