Electricity Design

Build electrical circuits with wires, light bulbs, switches, resistors, fuses.

Explorations

• Build circuits with light bulbs in series or in parallel. How does the current that flows through the light bulbs change in those configurations?

Specs

Various simulation properties are used for calculations of current and voltage in the circuits. You can vary:

• BatteryVoltage: set to 12 Volts by default. Increase or decrease to control what kind of battery is running the voltage of the circuit.
• BulbWattage: how powerful all the bulbs in the simulation are. Set to 60watts. Bulb brightness depends on this.
• ResistorResistance: value of resistance that all resistors in the simulation assume
• BulbResistance: resistance value for all light bulbs in the simulation. Set to 100ohms (no real need for the kids to change this, I think)
• Delay: how often (in seconds) the voltage meter announces the voltage in the direction it’s pointing

Sample Electricity Lesson Plans

• Lesson plan created for Greek Ministry of Education
  • Student Worksheet (in Greek)
  • Teacher Guide (in Greek)
• Lesson plans created by participants of the 2010 Summer Institute

Acknowledgements

• Simulation was built by Andri Ioannidou for a project funded by the Greek Ministry of Education
• Graphics by Tessera Multimedia.