Welcome back to my epic adventures in the world of science. In this particular project it was all about electricity. Ms Kadi mapped out the plan of the adventure that I followed along with. My mission of the trip was to find out “How does electricity help shape our society and how can we generate it more sustainably?” But before I headed on my expedition I had to learn about a source of energy of my choosing. It could differ from renewable sources like wind energy, hydro electricity etc or non renewable sources like fossil fuels. I chose to learn about solar energy and created a graphic organizer of the knowledge I collected:

My fellow friends also created some too, Dr Blondie made hers on nuclear energy where I learned it’s one of the lowest carbon producing energy sources and it causes far fewer deaths.  

Then we had to figure out how protons and electrons interact with each other to produce static electricity. Remember when balloons made your hair stand up when you rubbed them on your head? Well, as you rubbed the balloon on your head it transferred electrons from your hair to the balloon causing the balloon to be negatively charged. Then with a pop can we did a little experiment to see if you could move a pop can with a balloon that had been rubbed on you hair. I still don’t understand how it worked so I have to figure that out. Here is some footage of how it happened:

We also learned how to measure voltages and amps, we experimented with different items to see what were insulators and conductors. No surprise here objects like pennies, screws, paper clips, etc conducted electricity but things like wood, plastic, and styrofoam did not. The reason for that was because things like screws and paper clips are metals that allow electrons to flow through easily unlike styrofoam which does not allow electricity to move through at all since it has no free electrons.

Sofia, Gwen and I also created circuits with batteries and tested out series and parallel circuits. A series circuit is a simple path for electrons to follow along to a resistor (s). But a parallel circuit has two or more parallel paths for electrons to go through. Here are two examples of how the circuits look like:

This is a series circuit which is less reliable because if one part of it gets broken the whole thing stops working. This is a parallel circuit which works better because even if a part malfunctions energy can still carry on and charge the other parts.

We created some of our own circuits and powered lightbulbs with them like this one:
It was very bright and eventually burnt out (rip lil buddy)

Now to the fun stuff, creating a game that was very similar to the well known game operation. Our game could look like whatever we wanted, for example my friend did Lighting McQueen and pulled out car parts. With materials like a light, a buzzer, tweezers and more I created a board game that works 75% of the time. I had 0 clue what I was going to make my board game look like. But after countless minutes of thinking I settled on creating a witches cauldron that I would pick mushrooms, rat tails, eyeballs and children out of.

The first thing I did was cut holes in the top of my box and add the tinfoil. The tinfoil went on the underside of the lid and I folded it over the rims of the hole so the tweezers could hit it easier when they tried to get the pieces out. Then, I added a light and a buzzer that would vibrate and light up the box when the tinfoil got touched.  Finally I added the tweezers and was done! Luckily enough mine worked first try and this is how it ended up looking:

This is the underside:

This is the top:

Everyday we use electricity, without it we wouldn’t have iPads, phones, computers etc. We wouldn’t be able to use home appliances, we wouldn’t have working traffic lights to guide cars. Electricity charges our everyday life and the more we learn about different energy sources and the more we understand how to use them the more sustainable energy can become. I always thought nuclear energy was very harmful but after we learned about I realized it’s not that bad we just need a way to store it properly. As I learned about solar energy I found that the creation of solar panels is not good for the environment and heavy metals get leached out. So, if people keep researching and finding ways to solve these problems our energy can be cleaner and more efficient.

Goodbye everyone this is my last science 9 blogpost 🙁

I had a very fun time in science and we ended it off with making delicious s’mores!