Monday, 10 November 2014 Can you light a bulb using only one wire, one battery, and one bulb? (Probably apocryphal, but MIT engineers supposedly struggle with this question.) This is easily my top unit intro activity — I did it last year on Day 67. We’re starting our electric circuits unit this week. I asked them to […]

Tuesday, 19 November 2013 It always takes them forever to realize how the bulb works. Oh, and we short the battery a lot, too.

Monday, 2 December 2013   So, we’ve talked about broad concepts of voltage, current, and resistance. We’ve lit a bulb with just one battery and one wire. We HAVEN’T studied charge or electric fields. Doing circuits without charge & fields isn’t ideal — I think I need to be sure to do Coulomb’s Law next […]