Science 9

Electric House Project

In this project, I had to create a house with at least four working electrical circuits. The circuits had to be of different types like series, parallel, and combination as well as have a certain amount of lights and switches depending on the complexity of the circuit.

Series Circuits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Series–Parallel Circuit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parallel Circuit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Series–Parallel Circuit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

House Interior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

House Interior

Circuit Diagrams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electric House Project Questions 

1. You have three lights bulbs. All have the same intensity when lit. Explain how you can prove to a classmate that they are connected in series by unscrewing one light bulb. Support your answer. 

In a series circuit, there’s only one pathway for the electrons to follow so if one lightbulb is unscrewed, the electrons won’t flow and the rest of the lights won’t light up, proving it’s in series. 

 2. You have three light bulbs. All have the same intensity when lit. Explain how you can prove to a classmate that they are connected in parallel by unscrewing one light bulb. 

In a parallel circuit, there’s multiple pathways for the electrons to follow so if one lightbulb is unscrewed, the electrons have other paths to follow so the other lights will still light up. 

Note: you may need to play around with practice circuits to determine the answers for #3 and #4. You can do this using real circuits or the PhET Circuit Builder.  

3. You have three light bulbs. Two are connected in parallel. This parallel combination is connected in series with the third light bulb. Describe the relative intensity of each bulb. Support your answer. 

The lightbulb in the series part of the circuit is brighter than the two in the parallel combination. This is because the current must be diverted into two pathways for the parallel part, resulting in a slower flow and less voltage going through the loads. 

 4. In Question 3, describe the relative intensities of the two remaining lit bulbs if one of the bulbs in parallel was unscrewed. Support your answer. 

The two remaining lit bulbs have the same brightness with the other lightbulb unscrewed. This is because the unscrewed lightbulb stops the flow of one of the branches of the parallel circuit turning it into a series circuit, which distributes the voltage equally. 

5. Outline a step-by-step method that could be used to determine the resistance of the light bulbs in one of your circuits. Feel free to include a circuit diagram of your set-up. 

First, you measure the voltage of the lightbulb by hooking it up to a voltmeter. Next you measure the current in the circuit by hooking it up to an ammeter. Then, once you know the total voltage and current, you can figure out the resistance of the lightbulb with Ohm’s Law, which is V = I x R.

 6. Using your method outlined in Question 5, determine the resistance of the bulbs in one of your circuits.  

The amount of volts my circuit had was 4.5 V. The amount of amps my circuit had was 0.45 A. 4.5 divided by 0.45 is 10, which means that the lightbulbs in my circuit have a resistance of 10 Ohms.

Solution Fluency

1) Define a problem: Some of our circuits weren’t close to the table so it was difficult to connect the battery to the circuit. This made it annoying to test the circuits because one of us had to hold the battery in place while the other had to check to see if the lights on the other side lit up. The battery was also easy to knock over and when we tried taping the battery to the cardboard, it kept slipping and falling down.

Tinkercard Design

2) Dream possible solutions: To fix the battery problem, we began to brainstorm ways to have the battery attached to the cardboard that allowed us to connect it to the circuit better. Some of my initial ideas were to use a hook or hoop to keep the battery in place but we figured that it likely would be too flimsy. That led us to the idea of a more secure solution of a battery holder, which was a container for it to slide in.

Battery Holder in Circuit

3) Deliver a solution: I designed the battery holder in Tinkercad by measuring the sides of the 9 volt battery in the website. Then, I used cubes and changed them so that they were the right length and width, making sure there was some wiggle room for the battery to slide in. After, I had it 3d printed, which took 2 hours, but it made testing and troubleshooting the circuits a lot easier.

Battery Holder

4) Debrief the quality: While the battery holder did do its job effectively, I feel like I could have made one that was more sophisticated and taken more risks as its design was pretty simple and made with the constraints of the time I had. I think that if I did this again, I would keep the overall shape of the battery holder but combine some of my earlier ideas with hoops for the wires to keep them in place. This would make for a more exciting design and would’ve helped even more with the circuits.

Core Competency Reflection

In this project, I used critical thinking to create the circuits as I had to develop and design the circuits in my house that fit the criteria and my rooms. After creating the circuits, I had to make sure the circuits worked, and the lights lit up as well as be able to be turned on and off with the switches. With all the different parts, this didn’t happen right away, and I had to analyze and investigate the problems to see if I could fix them and get the circuit working. Another competency I used was personal awareness and responsibility. All the troubleshooting required from the project had me use self-determination and self-regulation a lot. A few times I had to spend over half an hour trying to get a circuit working but I kept on working on it and persevered, which paid off. I also tried to self-regulate myself by giving myself breaks or switching to another circuit after working on one for a long period. This helped me from getting too frustrated, although when I did, I tried to use that energy to keep working on the project.

Energy Sway and MLA letter/Information Fluency

 

Letter

Dear Honorable George Haymen, MLA 

We’re Alysa and Christy and we go to Riverside Secondary School in Port Coquitlam. Thank you for trying to consider the environment while improving BC’s economy through the metals we obtain from mining. However, as we write our letter to you, we feel like there are some amendable flaws in our current systems and attitude towards mining safety. In BC, we have rich minerals that can be mined from the ground, and we understand that it is an industry that generates a lot of revenue for the province, but we also wanted to remind you that we have many respected communities of Indigenous peoples too who have been using the land long before us. We wonder if you’re putting enough thought into their needs and if you know the answer to some questions regarding Indigenous communities. How does mining affect indigenous people’s cultures? How does mining affect Indigenous people’s health? We should acknowledge the bond Indigenous people have with the environment and ask why we put that connection at risk for the sake of money? There’s also health issues Indigenous people face that should be fixed regarding mining. We’ve been able to grow up without having to boil our tap water and without having to breathe polluted air or be threatened by any health issues as a result of government projects. If we don’t have to go through that, why are many Indigenous children put through it? Nobody, much less people who have been here first and have suffered enough, should live in lesser conditions compared to everyone else. That leads us to our last question, what are we doing to protect indigenous communities from mine contamination and how can we improve on it to ensure Indigenous people are put on the same standard as every other Canadian? 

Thank you for taking the time to consider this very important issue and we hope we will see your answer to our questions in new policies and regulations protecting Indigenous communities. 

Sincerely, 

Alysa and Christy 

Riverside Secondary School 

1) What questions did you need to research in order to create your sway?

I started with a main question of ‘how does mine contamination in BC affect Indigenous communities?’ and delved into sub questions about the effect mining has on Indigenous people’s health and culture, as well as why BC still continues with mining projects and what they can do about it. These guiding questions helped me create an informing sway about mine contamination in BC.

2) What new or familiar digital tools did you try to use as you worked through this project?

I used multiple digital tools like Google, Gale Engage, Citation Machine, and Google Images. Gale Engage and Citation Machines were new to me and I was interested in trying them out to help make my project better. I found that Gale Engage had a lot of information that was useful and I didn’t have to comb through so many sites to find the information I needed. Despite this, I found that I couldn’t get as specific in my subtopics like how mining affects Indigenous people’s health in BC with Gale Engage so I decided to use a combination of Gale and Google learn as much about my issue as I could. Citation Machines made citing my sources much quicker than I thought it would be, making it a site I definitely will use in the future, and it was good to use Google Images again and not having to worry about copyright.

3) What was the process you used to investigate the topic and how did you verify and cite the information you found?

I researched my questions by entering key words into Gale and Google to find articles about the effect mines have on Indigenous people. I verified the information that appeared by checking the date and author as well as reading through the article and checking the website itself to see if it was trustworthy. One article I found had information that would help support my ideas but it stated that the work hadn’t been peer edited yet and I knew it likely wasn’t trustworthy enough to use in my project. After paraphrasing the information, I copied the link into a citation machine and added it to my sources slide.

4) How did the process of completing this challenge go? What could you have done better?

I think that the process of completing this challenge went well as I was able to divide up the work with my partner and work successfully with her. I collected a lot of information about mine contamination and learned much about how dangerous mining can be for Indigenous people and how they’re often treated second class. I think that we could have used a more variety of sites to gather information since it would have given us more information and made our project stronger. Using more websites like Curio would also help me get used to them in case I have to use them for another project in the future.