Mini Lesson Plan: The Electricity Lighthouse
You’ll be shocked by what you’re about to learn!
Do you remember the first time you ever saw or heard about the word ‘electricity’? I don’t know about you, but my curiosity was first sparked as a kid when I saw a certain electric mouse in action!
But we don’t have Pokémon to generate electricity for us! So, what exactly causes our electronic devices to come to life when we plug them into wall sockets? Let’s find out together in today’s Mini Lesson Plan!
Activity 1: Twinkle Trails Episode 23 — The Electricity Lighthouse
Today, Miss Twinkle and the Twinkle Trails class visit a lighthouse to learn about the star of the hour: electricity!
Mini-Recap:
Electricity is a form of energy produced by the movement of tiny charged particles called electrons.
Electricity can flow freely through materials that conduct electricity well, such as metal, which serve as conductors. The opposite of a conductor is an insulator, such as rubber and plastic, which don’t conduct electricity well. Insulating materials are commonly wrapped around wires to prevent us from getting electric shocks when we touch the wires!
Activity: Shine A Light
Watch the following video and discuss what kind of materials you think will close the circuit and help to power the lightbulb. And if you have the materials, go ahead and test your theory in a real life experiment!
(Hint: Only conductor materials will close the electrical circuit. Materials like rubber, plastic, glass, and wood are insulators. Other materials such as silver, salt water, and steel are conductors that can close the circuit.)
Activity 2: Naturally Occurring Electricity
Static Electricity
Have you ever walked across a carpeted floor and received an unexpected electric shock? Maybe your hair rises with your hat when you remove it on a dry winter day? These everyday phenomena are caused by static electricity — an electric charge created by rubbing two different materials together.
Activity: The Butterfly Effect
Electricity has allowed us to enjoy a great many things; electric lights, telephones, and computers are just some of electrically-charged wonders. Did you know, that we can harness electricity — particularly, static electricity — to create cool craft projects too?
In this craft, we’ll be making a paper butterfly move its wings without touching it! This is a science experiment that’s going to look like magic to you little ones!
Activity: No Hands!
Is it possible to move a can without touching it? Let’s have a race! In this simple experiment, all you need is an empty can, a balloon and a head of (your own) hair!
Lightning
On a stormy night, you might have spotted a streak of light flash across the sky! That, my friends, is a naturally occurring source of electricity called lightning!
(Warning: Please do not try this at home.) In 1752, Benjamin Franklin (inventor of the lightning rod) conducted his famous kite experiment. He flew a kite during a thunderstorm with a key tied to the end of the string and an early type of battery.
When lightning struck the wet kite, electricity traveled down the string and Franklin received an electric shock! If it sounds dangerous, it is! (Water is an excellent conductor of electricity, which is why you shouldn’t turn on switches when you have wet hands!)
During a thunderstorm way up in the clouds, there are many droplets rain and bits of snow bumping into each other. This creates an electric charge (similar to how static electricity is created). When that electric charge races between clouds or down towards the ground, that’s the lightning that we see.
However, the charge in the clouds is a lot more powerful. In fact, it is so powerful that lightning is actually hotter than the sun!
Activity: Light it up
This experiment is our personal favourite. For a few moments, you’ll get to bring lightning into your home! How cool is that!
You might be wondering, what’s that boom we hear every time we see lightning?
Any sound you hear is made up of vibrations. Lightning is a huge discharge of electricity so when it moves through the air, it heats up the air around it. The hot air expands very quickly, pushing apart the air particles with great force and creating forceful vibrations.
The sound caused by the vibration of air around the lightning is what we call thunder. If you’re near a lightning strike, you may hear the thunder as a loud crack! If the lightning strikes further away, you might hear the thunder as a long, loud rumble.
Activity 3: Famous Inventors in Electricity
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison is most well known as the man who helped humanity overcome darkness with a flip of a switch.
Interestingly, Edison did not actually invent the first electric lightbulb! When he began working on his invention, electric light bulbs had already existed for a few years!
However, those light bulbs were expensive and short-lived. By making adjustments to pre-existing light bulbs, Edison invented a new lightbulb that lasted longer and was much cheaper! It might be more apt to remember Thomas Edison as the man who changed artificial lighting forever.
Success did not come easy for Edison. He had made 1000 unsuccessful attempts at making the lightbulb before he finally triumphed. When asked by a reporter how it felt to fail so many times, Edison simply replied with this:
“I didn’t fail 1000 times, the lightbulb was invented with 1000 steps.”
— Thomas Edison
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was an inventor and scientist in the same time period as Edison. In fact, they were competing businessmen!
Tesla and Edison advocated for different types of electricity — alternating current and direct current, respectively — for widespread use. This caused a bitter rivalry between the two for the entirety of their careers!
Besides discovering alternating current, Tesla also invented the radio, the remote control, and the electric motor! Today, Tesla is also the name of a car brand that uses electric motors! On top of these, Tesla had over a thousand more patents that brimmed with ideas to make electricity accessible to the masses!
Tesla dedicated his life towards making electricity cost-efficient and easy-to-use.
His legacy lives on in our daily lives in the form of his ingenious inventions!
Activity: Invent Something
To be an inventor, you just need a little creativity and a will to make the world a better place! Come up with an invention which you think will make daily life easier, and share how it works with your friends!
Activity 4: Our Relationship with Electricity
Where exactly does this electricity come from? Are our appliances being powered by a super-sized battery? Could there be a thousand hamsters running on wheels to generate power? (Spoiler: It’s not hamsters.)
Where does electricity come from?
Electricity is made in power plants by generators. Most power plants use fossil fuels but some use water, wind, and solar.
Inside the generator, the steam spins a big fan called a turbine. Turbines might look familiar to you because it’s the same engine found on airplanes!
The spinning turbine rotates a big magnet around a piece of wire that creates a magnetic field, electrifying the wire. This current is sent through transformers (no, not the alien-robot Transformers) so it can travel long distances. Finally, the electricity travels through wires behind our walls to the outlets in our homes!
Conserving electricity
The importance of conservation goes beyond saving money. When lesser electricity is used, lesser fossil fuels are burned, as simple as that!
Why is burning fossil fuels bad? On Earth, there is a limited amount of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. These are unrenewable sources of energy. Once they are burned, they cannot be replenished. We’ll run into a whole lot of trouble if we run out of fossil fuels!
If you’re interested in fossil fuels and their effects on our planet, you can read more about it in our Mini Lesson Plan: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
Alternative sources of energy such as solar and wind energy are considered clean energy because sunlight and wind are resources that we cannot run out of! They are renewable sources of energy!
Activity: Mini Wind Generators
These mini wind generators will spin when you blow on them, just like those giant ones pictured above!
There are many easy ways we can all do our part conserving energy both in school and at home!
Explore the great outdoors. This automatically cuts down on screen time at home. Bring the kids out on nature walks or a day out at the beach! Helping them learn the wonders Mother Nature has to offer promotes healthy lifestyles too, it’s a win-win all around!
Plant a mini garden. Plants are naturally great for the environment but they offer much more than that! They can teach your kids about plants as natural resources. Easy to grow plants include tomatoes and peas which will definitely be excited to harvest and eat once they ripen! We have a whole other Mini Lesson Plan on plants!
Implement “Turn It Off” time. For several hours a day, challenge the entire family to turn off all appliances and keep electronic devices aside. Yes, the adults too! This serves as a fantastic opportunity for family bonding with the little ones. Build a pillow fort together, play classic board games, put on a puppet show — wherever your imagination takes you, as long as electricity isn’t involved.
“I Spy” energy savings. Small acts like switching off the lights when leaving the room or turning off the television when you’re not watching can go a long way.
A lesser known electricity-wastage culprit is the gadgets that are plugged in even when they aren’t turned on. This is called phantom energy or vampire power. Phantom energy can account for up to 15% of your electricity bill!
Go into every room in your house and play a game of “I Spy” identifying which unused electronics are plugged in. Develop a good habit of unplugging together with switching them off when unused.
We hope this Mini Lesson Plan lit a spark of curiosity within you! Thought this was helpful? Share this with your fellow teachers and parents!
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SOURCES:
Kids Activities Blog
Alliant Energy Kids
HomeSelf
Static Electricity
Pikachu
