STEAM Team: Make Your Own Electric Quiz!

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Last week I visited the Hastings Branch of Pasadena Public Library to present a program to their "STEAM Team," a monthly club they have for kids 9-12 years old. We did a program about electricity called "Make Your Own Electric Quiz." It was so much fun exploring the mathematical principles involved in electrical circuits, such as the inverse ratio relationship between voltage, resistance and current explored by Georg Ohm in the early 19th century. I LOVE anything to do with scientific laws, and we got deep into Ohm's law (I = V/R).

Then kids wrote down math questions and answers on post-it notes, placing the post-its next to some brass paper fasteners I had prepped for them on a sheet of cardstock. On the other side, they wound a copper wire from the brass fastener for each question to the brass fastener for its correct answer.

To reinforce the things we learned about Ohm's law, I deliberately used a battery source not intended for 5mm LED diodes--a 9V battery. We had to use a resistor in order to prevent the bulbs from burning out.

More than half of the kids were able to get some form of a successful electric quiz by the end of class. A few kids weren't, but I stayed a long time after trying to help them to at least get their circuits working and their LEDs lighting up. There was one thing I did that may have introduced an unnecessary challenge: I saw one girl taping down her copper wires, and I said that looked like a good idea so that the wires would not move and touch each other. Pretty soon, everyone was putting tons of tape on their wires! It was so bad for one child that her LED only lit up very dimly and as far as I could tell it was because of all the glue all over her wires. Electricity is always such a complicated thing, it always takes me a few tries to get a project ready to present and then there's still some trial and error and learning even during the program.

As always I am sharing the slides I created for this program so that teachers or librarians can use them if they are helpful. You won't be able to see the animations--for the math equation slides I asked the kids to guess the answers before showing the answers. But this will still give you a pretty good idea. The slides also contain thorough step-by-step instructions on how to make the quiz.

--AnnMarie Hurtado, author of 36 Workshops to Get Kids Writing: From Aliens to Zebras

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