Category: Uncategorized

This rubric is for your drawing. You should be labeling each part of the drawing!

Review your work and give yourself a score. Explain why you gave your work this score.

These free resources allow your student to explore problem solving by mastering three word problems in each link below.

These questions ask you about HOW YOU THINK. Just answer them the best that you can. Some of these questions will ask you to take a picture of your work. If that is easy for you to do, great! If it is hard, bring it to the store at some point and we will discuss your problem solving strategies with you.

Each of these sets of questions should take 30-40 minutes.

• Music questions
• Setting up the Race!
• Cookie Sales
• Direct questions

If you have any questions or concerns, stop by the store or email us at edMe@myedme.com.

Thanks for working on your problem-solving skills!

Use this simulator to design and redesign basic circuits. Fix it, break it, and fix it again.

What is the same about all the circuits that light the bulb?

Exploring Challenge: Upload a picture of a circuit working with 3 lightbulbs.

(You can take and save a screenshot on Macs by holding down . On Windows computers use PrintScreen & Windows button at the same time. On a phone? Push home and power.)

Upload your screenshot file here and we will send you 100 brainpowers!

Master Challenge: Create a poster or write a paragraph that describes what all working circuits share in common. 200 brainpowers!

Make sure you have these words memorized so you can ace your next test. Take the 6-question Electric Vocab quiz.

We started this book learning about simple electrical devices, such as lightning rods and light bulbs. By the end of the book, your learned about technology changing the world today! From learning about A.C. insulation motors that give incredible speed to Tesla cars to the various, complex parts of a smartphone. To say the least, you now know the important ideas about electricity.

And, don’t forget about the important scientists that furthered the fields of electricity. Ben Franklin’s experiment helped us better understand electricity in nature. This observation helped Ben Franklin invent a device that we still use to save lives today. Later, Joseph Swan’s first light bulb and Thomas Edison later perfected it, which allows us to have endless light in our homes. And, then Nikola Tesla and his discovery of Alternating Current that allows the fast and cheap electricity throughout the world. Today, companies like Tesla, Inc., are designing electric cars to create a new type of car that is just as fast as other cars without all the pollution.  So, the next time you power on a cell phone or turn on your electric oven to bake cookies, think about how far we have come from discovering electricity. Many people in the 1800’s would have never imagined that the world you live in would be so full of light and energy! You have learned the same things and performed many of the experiments that other people used to help us design this electrified world. You can continue this work, and may even event Chapter 20 in this book! You now have the knowledge and problem-solving skills to continue this research!

Time: 15-20 Minutes

Materials:

1. Small iron nail
2. Insulating wire- ends must have exposed metal (have a grownup help you!)
3. Double A Battery
4. Paper clips or other metal objects

Instructions Step by Step: 

1. Wrap the wire around the nail in one direction, make sure the wire is tightly coiled. 
   1. If you coil the wire in different directions, the electromagnetic force will cancel out, and there will be little to none force of the magnet. 
2. Attach one end of the insulated wire to the positive terminal of the battery and the other to the negative terminal of the battery. 
3. Check your circuit: One end of the insulating wire is on the positive terminal. The insulating wire is wrapped around the nail tightly with some of the exposed metal touching each end of the nail. The other is on the negative terminal. with the excess attached to the battery.
4. Spread paper clips on the table.
5. Touch your nail to the paper clips. While electricity flows through your nail, it will act like a magnet. The battery will attract the paper clips to the nail. 
6. When the electricity stops flowing through the nail, then the nail will stop acting as a magnet.

When electricity is passed through the coiled wire, a magnetic field is present, and you are able to pick up other magnetic objects, such as paper clips! Some important things to keep in mind: the more coils your wire has, the better your magnet will work! Because more current is being generated, the more electricity is being passed, and a stronger force will be present! Be careful holding the battery, as it might get hot, as well as the insulating wire.

Here is a video we shot while doing this experiment.

Time: 30 Minutes

Materials:

• 9V Battery
• LED lights
• Play Dough and/or Alligator Clips
• Objects to test: nickel, wire, chalk, wood, coin, copper, cotton, rubber duck, umbrella, anything you want!

Experiment

1. Setup the circuit from the last experiment. Connect your 9V battery to wires so that an LED bulb lights up.
2. Open the circuit so there is a gap.
   • If you only want to use play dough and copper wire add a third playdough piece. Connect the wire from the battery to this new piece. Now you will have a gap between the wire connecting the battery and the two playdough pieces connecting the LED light.
   • If you use alligator clips instead, one wire will connect a battery terminal to one LED terminal. Another wire will connect to the other battery terminal and nothing else. The third wire will connect to the other LED terminal and nothing else. You will clip these last two wires to the new objects.
3. Test each object by placing it in the gap you created in Step 2.
4. If the light bulb lights up, then your circuit is full of conductors.
5. If the lightbulb does not light up, then something in your circuit is stopping the flow of electrons. These materials are called insulators because they protect us from electricity.
6. Record what you see as “Observations”. Use your observation to decide whether the object is a “Conductor” or “Insulator”.
7. Repeat Step 3 with all your materials while taking good notes of what you observe. 

Step by Step Demonstration With Explained Vocabulary: Start with an LED light. When you touch the plastic part of the LED light to the playdough nothing will happen. But, if you touch the legs of the LED light to the playdough, the rest of the LED lights will shine. Why? The legs of the LED lights are made out of metal. Metal is a good CONDUCTOR of electricity. Conductors are materials that allow the flow of electrons freely. A good conductor transfers electrons well. The reason why the plastic part of the LED light did not cause the others lights to shine, because plastic is an INSULATOR. Insulators are materials that electrons do not flow freely, but instead, are fixed in one place. A good insulator does not transfer electrons well. 

Video for Reference: https://youtu.be/i4-9U2wkwD4 

Time: 30 Minutes

Materials:

• 2 copper wires
• LED lights
• 9V Battery
• Store bought Play Dough

Equipment

Assemble circuit:

1. You will connect the battery to your copper wire. First, make a small loop around one terminal of your battery with the copper wire.
2. Put a piece of play dough on the other end of the copper wire.
3. Wrap the other copper wire around the other terminal.
4. Put another piece of play dough at the end of the second copper wire. 
5. Create any play dough shapes you want, but make sure there is a gap between the pieces.

Complete the circuit with LED lights:

6. Put one end of the LED light into one piece of play dough, and put the other LED wire into the other piece of play dough.
   • The electricity will have to flow through the LED light in order to complete the connection.
7. Play dough acts as your resistor so you may have to push your LED light further into the play dough so the right amount of electricity passes through your light. (You may also have to pull the LED wires further out of the play dough if it only lights dimly.)
   • You can control the amount of electricity going into the light by moving the LED around in the play dough.
8. If your circuit still does not light, check the connection between the battery and the copper wire. Your LED lights will be bright if you give electricity a path to travel.

Shocking Fact: Why is play dough a good conductor of electricity? The amount of salt in the dough allows electrons to move freely within the dough! Salt is an ion that allows the flow of electrical charge. 

Important note about resistance: The LED lights and playdough provide resistance in our circuit, therefore we do not need to buy a resistor separately. A resistor job is to limit the flow of electrons in a circuit, so the light bulb won’t become overpowered or burn out quickly. Also, the L.E.D. lights have a certain voltage of 3.2 volts, the battery is 9 volts, therefore, they have a pretty good amount of voltage difference. A resistor makes sure that the voltage difference has a very small impact on the current. Both LEDs and playdough have a built in resistance that allows the current to flow, despite the voltage difference. 

After you conduct the experiment, watch my experiment to learn important vocabulary. After you watch my video, you can answer these questions:

If you want to look at the questions now, you can click here.

Our eyes can see many of these waves, but not all! For example, the shortest waves that we can see are purple light. The purple color with the shortest wave is violet. Waves that are a little bit shorter create “ultra-violet” waves. These waves are too close together for our eyes to see. The Sun creates radiant energy, which includes ultra-violet waves, and many other invisible waves. Have you ever been sunburned? You can blame the ultra-violet light waves!

Waves shorter than ultra-violet waves can fit into small places. That is why they are used for X-rays. They are also created by nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants use reactions between the smallest particles of matter to create a HUGE amount of energy. Because these particles are so small, their electromagnetic waves are even smaller than X-rays.

Red is the visible light wave with the longest waves. Waves that are a little bit longer are called infrared waves. Your remote control uses infrared waves to communicate with your TV. Scientists found that heat sources send out infrared waves, too. Guess what? You are a heat source, and you send out infrared waves! By measuring infrared waves, we can know how hot something is.

Waves longer than infrared waves are useful for running cell phones, radios, and satellites.

Waves shorter than ultra-violet waves are useful for investigating small things. Each wavelength has its own special uses!

If you want to look at the questions now, you can click here.

This reading is about the relationship between electromagnetic waves, light and color.

Electromagnetic waves create one of the most important forms of energy for a human’s survival, light! You might be wondering, what does light have to do with electricity? Or even color? Read on to learn more about light. Electromagnetic waves create one of the most important forms of energy for human survival, light!  Light is actually an electromagnetic wave. This wave is made out of a photon. A tiny particle that moves through space. This means that light is a form of energy. If you have ever felt the sunlight on a summer day, you already know that energy from light can make heat! 

So, now that we have a basic understanding of how electricity is related to light…Have you ever thought about how your favorite colors are created? What makes a color blue? Or yellow? When we look at an object, we are really seeing reflected light. When we see a grumpy cat, the photons of light are reflected off the grumpy cat and into our eyes. When waves of light hit an object, some waves are absorbed by the object and some are reflected. 

The reflected waves are what you see.  Different wavelengths of reflected light create different colors! For example, when you see your favorite red shirt, the shirt is absorbing all the colors of light except for the color red. The frequency of light that we see as red is being reflected, and we see that shirt as red. 

The only colors that are different are white and black. White is a combination of all colors, so when we see white, the object is reflecting all the colors of light the same. Black is the opposite. When we see a black object that means almost all the colors of light are being absorbed. When you look at a black poster, the poster is absorbing all types of light. And, when you wear white shorts, they are reflecting all the light waves (but still get grass stains!).