In this activity, students construct simple electrical circuits and test a variety of materials to identify those that are good conductors and those that do not conduct electricity.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
- construct simple electrical circuits to test the conductivity of liquids and solids
- predict if a material is a good conductor and test their hypothesis
- rank/group materials according to their conductivity.
Download the Word file (see below) for:
- introduction/background notes
- what you need and what to do
- discussion questions
- student worksheets.
Related content
The article Electricity and sensors explains the basics of electric currents, circuits, conductivity and switches. Discover more about the the role of resistors in controlling the flow of electrical currents.
Activity ideas
Try one or more of these activities:
- Communicating with symbols teaches students how to draw a range of simple circuit diagrams using specific symbols for electrical components that can be understood worldwide.
- Controlling resistance explores the concept of variable resistance by using a simple electrical circuit.
- Challenging switches involves the construction of electrical circuits to explore the role of switches.
