OurWanderingAdventures : In The Lab 2015

Monday, January 19, 2015

In The Lab 2015

We're back in school today and we are working in the Physical Sciences. We are trying to see if a battery can operate a single light bulb cut from a strand of Christmas Tree lights!

Our first Lab Report of the year is always done on the board as opposed to their Science notebooks, so that they can get into the swing of things and as my 7 year old gets older, I like to repeat the basics so that they stick into his head a little more each time.

Materials You Will Need:

String of Christmas Lights
Scissors
Copper Wire Strippers
Ruler
Electrical Tape
Batteries of various sizes

The Process:

1. Cut 2 1/2 inch strips of electrical tape
2. Cut Light from strand with 1 inch of wire on each side of bulb
3. Use the wire strippers to strip the wire on each side of the bulb
4. Tape 1 end of the wire to 1 end of the battery and do the same for the other end

What Happens?!

The scientific process is a fun one, let them do it themselves, ALL OF IT! Yes, my 7 year old was stripping wires. Let them work on a trial and error basis. You have an entire strip of lights to work with, don't fret!

Once they get the hang of it, let them take it further! We got as many as 17 lights onto 1 C battery and 6 lights on on double A! They are still going at it and having a blast, is this really learning?!

The Science Behind it all:

Current electricity is produced when negatively charged electrons move through wire and other devices, in this case the wire. The energy from these moving electrons may be harnessed to do many kinds of useful work, in this case it lights the bulb. The wires, bulb & battery were all connected together in a single continuous loop. This allowed electricity to begin to flow through the wires from the battery, causing the bulb to light. Notice that there had to be a continuous loop for the electricity to flow. If you broke the loop at any point by separating the wires anywhere on the loop, electricity no longer flowed, and the light went go out.

This is the lab report that I made up for my kids to use in class. I print it up and then they cut it out and paste it into their Science notebooks. You can also print them and slip them into binders or whatever else works for you! Print them HERE!