Description:
"Hands-on" experiments developed by science and education experts allow students to investigate electricity-from conductors, insulators, resistors, capacitors, and thermal switches to circuits in doorbells.

Students practice valuable thinking skills-observation, prediction, deductive reasoning, conceptual modeling, theory building, and hypothesis testing-as they solve electricity challenges.

Using Virtual Manipulatives, students can control, modify, and experiment with electrical systems in a safe and accurate manner to visualize concrete and abstract concepts.

Circuits can be viewed as they would actually appear (above), showing the flow of the charges (below), or as a schematic (below).

Suggested Activities:
Have students take the tour to learn the basics of how to construct their virtual circuits.

Have students try the experiment with the circuits that are provided in the “Labs”. 

When they are comfortable with the tools and components, have students create their own circuits, experiment with components and test to see that they will work.

If they are able to construct virtual circuits that work safely, have the students create real circuits based on their virtual models.  (Images of their virtual circuits can be captured and printed.)

Students could record their experiments on a chart similar to the one below.