Content Videos (Lectures and animations to supplement lessons):
- Electricity
- Electric Charge
- Scale Reading
- Electric Circuits
- Ohms Law
- Resistance
- Electromotive Force & Internal Resistance of a Cell
Interactives (Online activities for student interaction & practice with content):
- Scale Reading
- Ammeter (In this animated activity, students view a step-by-step approach of how to connect an ammeter to a circuit. A brief quiz concludes the lesson)
- Voltmeter Simulation (students look inside a battery to see how it works. Select the battery voltage and little stick figures move charges from one end of the battery to the other. A voltmeter tells you the resulting battery voltage)
- Signal Circuit Simulation (Why do the lights turn on in a room as soon as you flip a switch? Flip the switch and watch the electrons. Does the light turn on immediately? Explain using your observations of the model)
- Ohms Law Simulation (students see how the equation form of Ohm’s law relates to a simple circuit. Adjust the voltage and resistance, and see the current change according to Ohm’s law. The sizes of the symbols in the equation change to match the circuit diagram)
- DC Circuit Builder (the DC Circuit Builder equips the learner with a virtual electronic circuit board. Add resistors, light bulbs, wires and ammeters to build a circuit, Explore Ohm’s law. Compare and contrast series, parallel and combination circuits. Use a voltmeter to measure voltage drops)
- Resistance
- Resistor Simulation (students look inside a resistor to see how it works. Increase the battery voltage to make more electrons flow though the resistor. Increase the resistance to block the flow of electrons. Watch the current and resistor temperature change)
- Resistance in a Wire Simulation (students learn about the physics of resistance in a wire. Change its resistivity, length, and area to see how they affect the wire’s resistance. The sizes of the symbols in the equation change along with the diagram of a wire)
- Light Dependent Resistor: Virtual Experiment (The LDR is a semiconductor device whose resistance decreases as the light level rises. Measuring the resistance as a function of light level allows the characteristic properties of the LDR to be established)
- Measuring Resistance (students use a virtual multimeter to measure voltage, current and resistance)
- Electromotive Force Tutorial (The tutorial contains a simple circuit of a battery, knife switch and light bulb (acting as a resistor, resisting the flow of current). It also contains an inductor, in the form of a wire coil. Inductors store energy in the form of the magnetic fields that are generated around them by the current passing though the wire. See how this works by clicking on the blue Turn On button to throw the knife switch and power the circuit, depicted by yellow glow in the circuit. Note the blue magnetic field lines (a manifestation of EMF) that form around the coil of the inductor, explained by Faraday’s Law of Induction. Note also that the light bulb flashes for a moment, then dims. This effect is explained by back EMF)
- Resistors: Virtual Demonstrations (students view animated demonstrations of two resistors in series, in parallel, one bulb paralleling two in series, and a waterwheel analogy)
Games (Online games for students to apply & test their content knowledge):
- Multimeter Challenge (this game gives students the opportunity to get better at setting the buttons to get a good reading from a digital multimeter. Take the challenge to see how good you are!)
- Techville & The Integrated Circuit (In the beginning of this game you have to take the quiz consisting of four questions, otherwise you will not be able to move on in this game. The answers to the questions are found in the museum. As “Maria” you walk around in the fantasy town “Techville” in Texas. At some points you have to give the right answers or figure out something before you can move on. You will pass a portal that takes you back in time to Nobel Laureate Jack Kilby’s lab in 1958, among other things. The challenge in this game is to make it to the end)
- Transistor Recycler Game (In this game, your job working at a Transistor Recycling Centre is to ensure that only items containing transistors are sent to the recycling machine. Goods enter the recycling machine via a conveyer belt, and you must remove all the items that do not contain transistors. You are awarded one point for each item that you correctly remove from the belt. If you mistakenly remove an item with a transistor, two points will be deducted from your total score. The game has an infinite number of levels, and you will be evaluated at the end of each level. When you have completed one level you can move onto the next, in which the belt moves faster and there will be new items to sort. If you’re really skilled you could become this month’s super recycler!)
- Silicon City! (Dr. Volt is about to pull the plug on Silicon City and plunge it into darkness! Investigate the science of electricity with your fellow spies: AC DC, Di Ode, Chip and Max Wells in a secret mission to save the city. Great introduction into electricity, what circuits are, how to diagram circuits and how to determine experimental results with circuits. Good fun.)
- Electric Circuits & Security (student play the role of detective while completing challenges. Help Oscar retrieve his camera and avoid the dangerous electricity fields by changing the electrical circuits that control the motion detectors. Add batteries, bulbs and coiled wires while using your knowledge of electrical circuits to beat the security. Add resistance, overload the system and save the day!)
- Circuit World (students build and test their own circuits; parts include batteries, cells, lamps, resistors, switches, motors, ammeters, buzzers and wire!)
- Circuit Bulb (Connect the light bulb with wires to light them all up. Be careful not to overload them!)
- Ohms Law Quizlet (Learners review Ohm’s Law and then work 12 problems. In each of the problems, students are given two of the three variables (voltage, resistance, or current) and are asked to solve for the third)
- Ohm’s Law Vocabulary Game (students test their knowledge by trying to answer 53 questions in 15 minutes!)
For Teachers 