• John Travoltage
• Static Electricity
• Faraday Law
• Circuit Design

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Explore concepts of static electricity, including the transfer of charge and grounding.

Challenge Prompts

• Predict what will happen to John if he drags his foot on the carpet. What happens when his finger gets close to the door knob?
  
• Observe discharges with John’s arm in several different positions. Explain how arm location and charge accumulation affect discharge.
  
• How do charging and discharging compare? How charging can go unnoticed, but discharging is often accompanied by a shock? Explain.
  
• Try building up charges while John’s finger is touching the doorknob. Explain your observations. 
  

Challenge Prompts

• Predict what happens when a charged balloon is moved closer to the neutral wall. Draw a picture.
  
• After rubbing the balloon on the sweater, how does the charge on the balloon compare to the charge on the sweater? What happens to the positive charges? What happens to the negative charges? Draw a picture.
  
• Remove the wall, and use two balloons to explore attraction and repulsion. How do the +/- symbols help you decide whether something attracts or repels?
  
• Explain how a balloon can be strongly or weakly attracted to the sweater. 
  

Investigate how a changing magnetic flux can produce electricity.

Challenge Prompts
• How many ways can you cause induction? Explain your method(s) citing evidence from the simulation.
• Sketch two different situations in which the light bulb lights up. Indicate the N/S poles of the magnet and the direction of its motion. What is the direction of the induced current in each case?
• Predict what happens to the brightness of the bulb when the number of turns in the coil is reduced by half, but the speed of the magnet remains the same.
​• How does the speed of the magnet affect the brightness of the bulb?

Build circuits with resistors, batteries, and switches; experiment with conductors and insulators.

Challenge Prompts
• Build a circuit to turn on a light bulb.
• Predict what will happen to the brightness of a light bulb when the voltage is changed.
• Discover a way to connect two light bulbs in a circuit so that: (a) if one bulb is disconnected both bulbs go out, and (b) if one bulb is disconnected the other bulb will remain lit.
• Compare a circuit with two resistors connected in series to a circuit with two resistors connected in parallel. Describe what happens to the current and voltage across each resistor.
• Explain the advantages and disadvantages of series and parallel circuits. 
• Design an experiment to determine which objects are insulators and which are conductors.
• Determine how to increase the electron speed or reverse the direction of motion. Explain your method.
​• What does the fire represent?
• Predict what happens to the current in a circuit when battery resistance or wire resistivity is changed.