Last week I attended the Ericsson Atlantic Corridor National Primary Science Leinster regional finals in Tallaght IT and was delighted to see such high standards of science work being displayed by all the pupils that attended. The winners of the event made electricity using lemons along with copper and zinc plates. One can find videos on YouTube to tell us how to do this, such as the one below.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/rB11w2c4RnM[/youtube]
Of course teachers are sometimes reluctant to go on YouTube in school, which resulted in me looking for alternatives. After a while I stumbled across the TED website which has video clips on a number of topics including science.
While browsing TED I did not find the lemon circuits, but found a clip on how to make electric circuits using play dough! The videos show you how to make one type of play dough which is a conductor and another type of play dough that is an insulator. To check out step by step videos on how to create these play dough cirucits go to the squishy circuits website which was created by undergradutes from the University of St. Thomas in the US. Click on one of the circuit below for the link.
For primary science I think that it is important to share easy to follow instructional videos with colleagues since some primary school teachers may lack the confidence to try out some thing like this. Try it out, it’s loads of fun and the kids will love it.