The children planned their own scientific investigation into circuits today. They wanted to know whether the length of the wires in a circuit made a difference to the brightness of a bulb or the speed of a motor. The class decided what equipment they would need and how they would record their results. They made sure that they only changed one thing in the test (the length of the wire). The children also decided that a grading system was the best way to record the brightness of the bulb or speed of the motor. Later on some of the groups used the amount of breeze from the fan on the motor to decide if it was faster or slower.
The class discovered there was a difference but only a slight change when using different lengths of wires in the circuits. They came up with an ‘er’ conclusion which was…’the shorter the wires, the brighter the bulb’ and ‘the longer the wires, the slower the speed of the motor’. Some children went further by saying that to keep the brightness the same in a circuit you would need more voltage for longer wires.
8 December 2023