Spring+'10+meeting+updates

Big Ideas & Essential Understandings we believe are necessary for students to learn. - Current is conserved around a circuit, energy is dissipated. - A battery does not produce a fixed amount of current. - Electric potential energy is transformed into light & heat energy in a circuit. Energy does not "produce" electricity. No production or destruction of energy.!
 * Electric current is different from electric potential energy.**

- electrons exist throughout the circuit, even before current begins to flow. (They don't start inside the battery).
 * Microscopic properties of circuits are related to macroscopic properties.** (Eg. how electric current relates to the forces between charged electrons). "World of the small determines the world of the big."

- Small current means low speed charge flow (or low volume of charges flowing), large current means high speed/ volume charge flow.
 * Current is a rate of change**

Our topic covers: - CA Standards 5a and b ("Students know how to predict the voltage or current in simple DC circuits constructed from batteries, wires, resistors, and capacitors") - VA Standards ph.6c (Electric charge moves through circuits and is conserved)

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

1. What makes a light bulb light up? (can be answered on several different levels - big picture of energy transfer from power plant to light bulb, all the way down to what's happening in the filament). 2. What's flowing or moving around a circuit? 3. What causes an electron to move? 4. What makes a light bulb brighter or dimmer? 5. Why are there different sized batteries? (referring to voltage and physical size).

KNOW, UNDERSTAND Vocab: Current, electrons, protons, resistance, electric potential energy, electric potential / voltage, circuit, short/open/closed circuit, switch, resistor Know what circuit diagrams represent in the "real world" "Electric power is change in electrical energy / change in time" "Current is the amount of charge that moves through a circuit element divided by the elapsed time." "Electric potential difference is change in electric potential energy per unit charge." "In any system of electrical charge, electrical movement or electrical interaction, both charge and energy are conserved." V= IR

DO - Draw circuit diagrams?

Extra questions: 5. Why does a circuit need to be a closed loop? & What's a "short circuit?" 2. What happens when you walk into a room and switch on a light? What happens to the electricity after it goes to/through the light bulb?