Our January Home school Program was Simple Circuits
We had an AWESOME attendance of 42 children! It did get a little chaotic (since we weren't exactly prepared for that many), but we managed to make it work.
We started out discussing electricity and circuit board basics. We had an awesome example of a circuit board that was donated by a local company that builds chicken fryers. We discussed some of the different parts on it, talking about what each part does, and comparing them to familiar electronics.
We talked about how the display had a bunch of lines to make different characters, like on a microwave or a digital alarm clock.
We talked about different appliances that used buttons like the ones on our board.
We discussed how capacitors hold energy... kind of like a battery.
We also discussed the vibration of crystal oscillators (which I personally think are really interesting), and LEDs. There were a lot of electronics we could compare to the lights.
We talked about other parts of the circuit board, but I've labeled a few of the more interesting ones (at least to the kids) on this image.
Buttons
Display
Capacitor
LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes)
Crystal Oscillator
Diodes
We also had several blank boards to look at. We compared labels and shapes to the full board. We traced the lines traveling between different parts to see how the energy travels (which you sometimes need to flip the board over for!) We also talked about how the boards themselves are made... specifically the green coating over the metal, and the way multiple layers to the board offer different paths.
We had a cover from the company too, so we were able to lay it on top of our circuit board to see how it lined up. There are transparent parts of the cover so the lights and displays can show through. The kids also liked seeing how the numbers lined up with the buttons on our circuit board.
After we learned about the more complicated circuits, everyone got a chance to build their own simple one.
The paper circuits used a print off, copper tape, a battery, and an LED.
You can find complete instructions here.
We got Copper tape and LEDs on Amazon.
Most of our batteries just came from the dollar store, but I'm sure they're on Amazon too.
It's very important that the tape stays connected. We explained how to fold the tape over itself, but a lot of the kids still ended up tearing it at the corners. You can hook some of them back together (making sure the copper touches copper... not adhesive), but we ended up with a lot of wasted copper. Make sure to emphasize how careful kids need to be... or provide a lot of assistance.
They were all very proud when the lights worked. We mixed up the LEDs so they had no idea what color they were getting until it turned on.
It's also very important to remember that the positive and negative sides of the LED are important. It is a diode, so the current only travels in one direction. Luckily, this is easy to remember, as the longer wire is positive (so essentially, + = more).
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