January 14th, 2006

Class started with taking care of administrative tasks (payments, program descriptions to parents, etc) by Kari while Matt set up.

Kari introduced herself, her position, general rules for the course with regard to computer maintence, and moodle. Matt then introduced himself and his position, and lectured on electric charges, potential differences, and the flow of electrons to produce electricity. He then lectured methods to create a battery cell.

Before students built batteries, Matt had students use voltmeters to measure voltages across manufactured batteries to become accustomed to using voltages. Students then built their own batteries using combinations of various metals. They recorded the potential difference among various pairs of metals to try to determine which pair created the highest potential difference which are combinations of best and worst reducing agents. The students shared their results with the other team.

After snack, students explored a circuit building applet:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/Applets/circuitbuilder/default.htm

They used this to learn how potential differences across batteries are used. By building a simple circuit with one battery and one resistor, students learned about Ohm's law and learned how to make a light-bulb light up using a battery. To measure currents and voltages, students needed to add voltmeters and ampmeters. That allowed them to learn about internal resistance in electricity measuring devices in the real world. Lastly, students learned if they set the resistance of a circuit to zero, including the internal resistance of the measuring devices, and apply a voltage, the voltage blows up, creating a short circuit which drains the battery quickly and burns the circuit.

Class ended with students filling out their moodle entries and Kari providing further explanation to parents about SUCCEED and Shodor Scholars Program.

Here is tutorial for using the Applet we used in class:
http://www.shodor.org/refdesk/Resources/Activities/OhmsLaw/index.php

And here is the applet we used:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/Applets/circuitbuilder/default.htm