Virginia Department of Education
Electricity and Circuits
Electrify your classroom as you lead pupils through a series of steps to demonstrate basic principles of electricity and magnetism. They design a simple circuit and test this for static electricity and current electricity. Next, they...
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Exploring Electricity - Four Activities
These are four classic activities used for instructing upper elementary electricians. The first involves experimenting with the Van de Graaff generator. The second is a series of hands-on experiences with static. In the third activity,...
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Static Electricity
Students engage in a instructional activity that is concerned with the concept of static electricity. They conduct an experiment with balloons and make observations of how it works. The data is collected and written down and they define...
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Electricity
First graders become aware of the presence of static electricity. They create static electricity using friction.
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Zapped!
Fifth graders describe the behavior of static electricity as observed in nature and everyday occurrences.
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Stormy Weather
Students conduct various experiments to explore the concepts that static electricity is the cause of lightning.
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The Invention of Faraday Cage
Learners demonstrate how Faraday's cage work by building their own electroscope. In this physics lesson, students explain how Faraday's cage work. They cite several applications of this principle in the real world.
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Lightning
Students study lightening and the history behind how it was used for electricity. In this electricity lesson students complete several experiments on the invention of the lightning rod.
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What is Lightning?
Students experiment with electricity to understand lightning. In this lightning activity, students show how static electricity causes lightning. Students discuss questions about their experiment and gather important facts. Students...
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Lightning in a Jar
Students create lightning with two common objects and observe the colorful "discharge" of electrons on a smaller scale. By exploring the phenomena of static electricity, students relate their knowledge to the real-life weather phenomena...
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Storms and Extreme Weather
Students explore hurricanes and tornadoes by conducting an experiment. For this weather pattern lesson, students define many extreme weather vocabulary terms and discuss the relationship with static electricity. Students utilize plastic...
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Thunderstorms
Fourth graders examine the attraction between two different charges to investigate lightning in a thunderstorm. They complete an experiment and a worksheet.
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Insulators and Conductors
Students conduct an experiment in which they create open and closed circuits. In this insulators and conductors lesson, students review open and closed circuits and then get in groups to make both kinds of circuit. Students use a...
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Lightning It's Shocking, It's Frightening, It's Lightning!
Third graders decide what they want to explore lightning, how to go about finding the answers, and deciding what skills they need to further study some of their questions.