In the electric house project we are supposed to build a house, with four rooms and we have to makes sure those rooms light up. One room is a series circuit, another is a parallel circuit, then a combination circuit and finally a choice circuit. We are going to come across several problems while building the house which we are going to have to fix.

This is our house in the end. (the last circuit may need to be fixed but the rest are fine)

Project Questions

You have three light bulbs. All have the same intensity when lit. Explain how you can prove it is connected in series by unscrewing one light bulb.

When connected in series if one is not working the rest off the lights are not working.

You have three light bulbs. All have the same intensity when lit. Explain how you can prove it is connected in parallel by unscrewing one light bulb.

In parallel if one light is broken/not working the rest of the lights will still be on.

You have three light bulbs. Two are connected in parallel. This parallel combination is connected in series with the third bulb. Describe the intensity.

The light in series is brighter and has a much higher intensity while the ones in parallel have a much lower intensity than the one in series.

In question number 3, describe the intensity of the two remaining lit bulbs if one of the bulbs in parallel was unscrewed.

They have the same equal amount of intensity.

Solution Fluency Questions

DEFINE: We actually dealt with several problems mostly with the lights and getting them to work but the problem that we chose to fix was how our house was slanted because of the weight of our deck.

DREAM: We came up with 3 ideas before we decide on our final design. At first we thought that we could remove the deck completely even though it solves the problem we would have nothing to print. Then we thought that we could build walls on each side of the deck but then the deck would look weird and we still wouldn’t really need to print anything. We also though to create some type of weight, something heavy that would level it out, but also small so it doesn’t ruin the house. But that wouldn’t work.

DELIVER: In the end we decide to create two columns or poles to hold it up. So then we measured how tall our deck is so we can figure out how long to make our poles.

DEBRIEF: We had to make it a little shorter because the 3D printer wouldn’t print anything taller than 15cm. In the end we got two support beams to keep it up and straight and all leveled out. I think we did quite well and we solved our problem. Gluing was a little difficult because the glue gun burned some of the top of the poles, so we had to look for solution and instead used superglue, which was also hard because it kept moving and wouldn’t stick but it worked in the end.