Introduction

Energy consumers are bombarded with advice on reducing our energy usage for cost or conservation reasons. What if instead of reducing your energy usage, you had your own way to produce “clean” electricity? In this expedition, we’ll explore how energy is harnessed and converted into usable electricity, then we’ll get hands-on and build our own dynamo devices out of mostly recycled materials. 

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Important Information: This expedition is the Cycle 4 Physics Pathway expedition option

Essential Questions

• What is electricity and how is it generated?
• How is energy converted from one form to another in useful ways?
• What is an “action at a distance”?
• How do components work together in an electrical circuit?
• Why do voltage, current, and resistance behave the way that they do in circuits?
• Why do circuit designers arrange circuit elements in certain ways?

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Explain and apply the production of current through electromagnetic induction.
• Build and analyze electrical circuits.
• Understand electrical and magnetic fields, and “Actions at a distance”
• Describe and apply the conservation laws of momentum and energy.
• Explain how energy changes form.
• Explain how simple machines apply force to do work.