Thursday 11 February 2016

ELECTRIC CIRCUITS-By Paula Pinilla and Ernesto Garcia

 Paula and Ernesto built two models, one of a house and one of a city. They used boxes, plasticine, card, plastic toys and anything they considered useful. They fitted electric circuits in their models , including different elements as light bulbs and switches. They fitted in a circuit in parallel in the house model. This way they could show how the elements of the circuit are independent from eachother. Due to this you can switch  the different light bulbs on or off, in different rooms independently. This is because circuits in parallel are made up of many circuits joined together and while some parts of the circuit are closed, (lights on), at the same time, other parts of the circuit can be open, (lights off).


 In the model of the city they fitted in a circuit in series. In this case there is only one circuit with many elements in a line. All the light bulbs are connected one after the other, including the light source or battery and the switch. This means that the entire circuit is either open or closed. If the circuit is open, all the light bulbs will be off and if it is closed all the light bulbs will be on.



 Both circuits have their advantages and their disadvantages depending on the needs in each case. Sometimes it is useful to be able to switch many elements on or off at the same time, using only one switch to do this, e.g Christmas tree lights. In other cases, it's better to be able to control the elements individually even if this means having different switches, e.g. in a house, we usually don't need to switch all the lights on or off, it's better to be able to control each room independently.


INTERACTION FUNCTION - EXTRA ACTIVITIES

If you've had problems with this unit and you would like to reinforce some of the concepts, you can do these extra activities. Hand them in as soon as possible so I can consider them for the next grade mark, I recommend Monday 15th February at the latest!

Write stimuli, receptor, coordination system, response and effector for the following situations.
a) A man hears music and begins to clap.
b) A zebra sees and hears a lion and runs away.
c) A boy touches a flame and pulls his hand away quickly.
d) The temperature goes up and  a man begins to sweat.
e) A chamaleon sees a predator and changes colour.