Science of Electricity

Every week, Madison (my 10-year old daughter) and I teach a 1.5-hour afterschool science club for K-2^nd graders.  Each week she helps plan the lesson and then write the blog about what we did. 

We have provided links to the books we used to sneak in some literacy.  We learned most of the science experiments and activities from Steve Spangler (awesome speaker and science guy extraordinaire).  We have included links to his science supplies, experiments, and videos.  We have also included links to our YouTube videos. These links take you away from the blog and to external websites.

Science of Electricity – see our YouTube Video Here! 

Science Standards Addressed:

• ·      Describe how energy produces changes.
• ·      Understands that light is a form of energy.
• ·      Know that energy and its changes can be measured.
• ·      Know that some forms of energy can do useful things (light up a light bulb).
• ·      Know how electricity flows through a simple circuit.
• ·      Know that materials are made of atoms and molecule (helium atom models)

Plus we snuck in some speaking and listening standards like asking questions, expressing ideas, following multi-step directions, and participating in discussions.

As the children arrived we played the songs Electric Avenue, by Eddie Grant; Shock the Monkey, by Peter Gabriel; and the Electric Slide by the Hit Crew.

We had a very electric snack – we played with our food – against our Moms’ instructions – and made apple batteries and orange powered clocks!

To sneak in some literacy standards, while they ate snack we read them When Charlie McButton Lost Power by Suzanne Collins, illustrated by Mike Lester.

It is about a boy named Charlie who loves computer games so much, he never plays with anything else - so when the power goes out, he's really in the dark. Ha! Get it? He steals a battery from his sister's doll and ends up in the time-out chair. Feeling remorseful when his sister starts crying, they play time games and pretend to be dragons and wizards. When the power returns, Charlie decides that it might be fun to spend some more time with his sister.

Energy Ball

Link to Energy Ball 

The energy ball has two small metal electrodes when they are both touched the ball glows red and makes a funny sound. 

Dad showed how a simple circuit works demonstrating a switch by giving Adi a high five. Then we got into a circle.  Two people touched the electrodes, and the rest of us held hands.  When everybody was touching hands the energy ball glowed. We explained how electricity was flowing through our simple human circuit and we had them all take turns letting go of hands and being the “switch.”  We got all warm and mushy as we talked about how as a community we have energy we can give to each other, how if we stick together we have power, and how if any of us doesn’t participate then the group has no power. 

Close up of Dad's Shirt - Silly!

Helium Models
All the stuff in our world – is matter.

Matter is made up of atoms. One of the simplest atoms is Helium, which contains two protons, two neutrons and two electrons. We brought a helium tank to do some balloon experiments, so we decided to make a model of helium!

We made models of a helium atom by drawing PLUS signs on two Styrofoam balls and drawing ZEROS on two other balls to represent positively-charged protons and neutrons (zero electrical charge).

We poked wires through the balls to hold them together.

We left about a foot of wire sticking out from the center and attached the tiniest Styrofoam balls we could find – labeled with minus signs – to represent the negatively-charged electrons spinning far from the nucleus of the atom.  Electrons flowing through wires is electricity – a current of electrons.


Don't Give Me Any Static

We used balloons to grab electrons from our hair – you all know this trick.

It was lots of fun sticking the balloons to the wall and creating static electricity hairdos!

We sprinkled some pepper on a paper plate. When we put a static charged balloon near it – the pepper jumped onto the balloons!  Soap bubbles and styrofoam packing peanuts were also drawn to the negatively-charged balloons.

When we put two statically-charged helium-filled balloons next to each other, they repelled each other – they looked like two boxers in a ring, bobbing and weaving around each other.

With these cool static tubes Link to Static Tube  We gathered electrons from our hair and used this static electricity to make the tiny Styrofoam pellets dance inside the tubes. We could run our hands over the tubes and watch the pellets jump around. It looks like they are trying to stay away from our fingers.


Simple Circuits

Dad showed us some versions of electric circuits and showed us how electrical energy can be stored in batteries and how it can be changed into different forms of energy and used to do stuff like pick up paperclips (electromagnets) spin a fan, make a buzzing sound, and light up a light bulb.

Then as a grand finale’ we all made lots of circuits and electromagnets. A wire carrying an electric current generates a magnet field – by wrapping a wire around a nail and generating a current, we created electromagnets that could pick up paper clips

Nobody was SHOCKED by how much fun we had!