The Young Science Investigators (YSI): Project Kit is a free interactive Science resource for 7-11 year olds from the BP Educational Service. It invites pupils to become Young Science Investigators, using the cartoon characters Beepy, Dev and Kate with a focus on science at work in the real world and scientific enquiry skills.
The kit is based around three curriculum topics : Electricity, Forces and Materials.
You need to register with the BP site to access it, but it’s free to do so.Find out more at : www.bp.com/bpes/ysiprojectkit
To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, commissioned and funded by the Wellcome Trust, has created The Great Plant Hunt. This project will encourage Primary school children to explore the natural world around them and join other schools in the biggest ever school science project.
The Great Plant Hunt invites primary school children to follow in the footsteps of Darwin by going on nature walks in and around their school grounds. They’ll find out more about plants and in the process learn key scientific skills. There is a lot more information, and links to resources in the Teacher Area of the site.
All teaching materials and resources are available to download – so you can make your own Treasure Chest of resources to run The Great Plant Hunt completely free.
To answer another one of the questions you submitted. Trying to explain why the brightness of bulbs in a circuit changes can be tricky. It can be helpful to imagine different analogies/models to explain what is happening.
A battery with one bulb connected is your standard to compare things to. Electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other, flowing through the bulb as it goes, making the bulb light up.
Adding a second bulb in series will increase the total resistance in the circuit. The bulbs will be dimmer than the single bulb.
Adding a second bulb in parallel is a different situation. You have added a second parthway for the electricity to flow, The resistance is greater than a single bulb, but is is not as high as the two bulbs in parallel. The two bulbs will be brighter.
A “cars on the highway” analogy may help explain the distinction: think of a wide highway narrowing to a one-lane bridge to cross a river. Now imagine that in order to get rid of traffic jams, the highway department builds another one-lane bridge over the river. The “resistance” (in this case analogous to the width), of both bridges stays the same, but the amount of “current” or traffic that can cross the river has increased, so the overall “resistance” of the entire system has decreased. Taken from here.
In a series circuit, each bulb you add will make the brightness of the bulbs dimmer and dimmer
In a parallel circuit, the brightness of the bulbs does not change with the addition of more bulbs (but if you added many parallel circuits, eventually all of the bulbs would dim down as you approached the capacity of the battery)
The GCSE Bitesize page may help explain things to you too.
More Links and Resources
Here are some more links that hopefully will help with teaching circuits
The free circuit builder Crocodile Elementary is now called Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can get it here. This will let you build circuits to your heart’s content!
For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.
You need to register with the BP site to access it, but it’s free to do so.Find out more at : www.bp.com/bpes/ysiprojectkit
