Electricity – How does a light bulb work in a series circuit? Is mains power renewable?
During science this half term we have had great fun exploring many of the childrens' questions about electricity. We have enjoyed many practical lessons working with different circuit components and have learned lots of new skills, some fantastic problem solving skills have been observed too. We have also looked at renewable and non-renewable energy resources and the important findings of Michael Faraday. We found out a little bit about the work of Henry Snaith, who is a professor in physics at the University of Oxford. He and his team are working on how to make solar cells far more efficient and more affordable.
We really enjoyed finding out which materials were insulators and conductors by placing them into the series circuits we had built and observing whether electricity could pass through the different materials and light the bulb. We used what we found out from this lesson and the skills we developed during other lessons to build an intruder alarm. We had to design the alarm and choose our materials carefully, remembering what we had learnt about their electrical conductivity and then justify our choices using the new scientific vocabulary we had been taught during the half term.
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