Electrical Emergency! Repair the airport circuits
The clock is ticking! A storm has damaged airport equipment, and your class needs to get it working ready for a safe landing.
In this workshop, you will build a series circuit to get the lights on the runway working.
Experiment with switches, motors, buzzers, conductors and insulators to create full circuits for the airport radar and announcement systems.
Learning Objectives
Students will:
- understand various components in a circuit including switches, bulbs and cells
- predict whether or not a lamp will light in a simple series circuit
- recognise the function of a switch in a circuit
- identify conductors and insulators
Students will be working scientifically:
- Setting up simple practical enquiries, comparative and fair tests, making systematic and careful observations.
- Identifying differences, similarities or changes related to simple scientific ideas and processes using straightforward scientific evidence to answer questions or to support their findings.
Electricity
- Identify common appliances that run on electricity
- Construct a simple series electrical circuit, identifying and naming its basic parts, including cells, wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers.
- Identify whether or not a lamp will light in a simple series circuit, based on whether or not the lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery.
- Recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit and associate this with whether or not a lamp lights in a simple series circuit.
- Recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors.