You Said It! Electricity Product Reviews


You Said It! Product Reviews - Educational Innovations NewsletterWe have assembled a brilliant array of electricity products to help you explain the fundamentals of electricity to your students.   We’ve got everything from Electric Paint to Plasma Globes.

Here’s what some of our customers are saying about our some of their favorite EI electricity teaching tools.

If you have a favorite Educational Innovations product, let us know!  We’d love to share your review with your fellow teachers and science lovers.

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Experimenting with Our Electricity Kit


Donna Giachetti, Educational InnovationsBy:  Donna Giachetti

A Lesson on Electricity… with Elmo

Even babies understand the difference between ON and OFF.  After mastering peek-a-boo, turning a switch on and off is one of a toddler’s favorite games.  What will happen if I press here?  Where did that light come from?  Who made that noise?  Something nearly always happens when a button is pushed, and it leaves children wanting to know more.  At least that’s how it went in my house.  My son wasn’t satisfied squeezing Tickle Me Elmo’s belly to hear the little guy giggle.  He soon figured out how to switch Elmo on-off-on-off so rapidly that the poor fuzzball appeared to have a bad case of the hiccups.

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FUN-YES! with SPILL-NOT!


Evan Jonesby: Evan Jones

How the SpillNot works:

When you hold a cup of juice while walking, the juice tends to spill because the cup accelerates forward (ax, FIG.1, green arrow) and backward (-ax) with each step. The juice tips in response to that acceleration, and may spill over the rim of the cup.

Spill Not, Educational InnovationsThe Spill Not automatically tips the cup so that its top stays parallel to the juice surface (FIG.2). For example, if the juice surface tips to 30 deg, but the cup stays horizontal, the juice could spill. But if the cup also tips to 30 deg, we get no spill! Note that there are only 2 forces on each portion m of juice…the weight mg down, and the buoyancy force Fb of the juice pushing at a right angle to the surface. These two forces result in a horizontal accelerating force ma (in red). We see from FIG.1 that

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Gyrocopter Lesson


Tami O'Connor, Educational Innovationsby: Tami O’Connor

As an elementary and middle school teacher and Girl Scout leader, I had a bag of tricks that I dug into frequently…  One of my favorites was the gyrocopter.  I always kept a template in my files and when teaching about air, friction, forces symmetry or flight, out it came.  It was simple enough for kindergarten students to build, yet complex enough to hold the attention of eighth graders as we discussed principles of drag, the characteristics of flight or even just isolating variables in an experiment.

Nearly 400 years before the invention of the helicopter, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a machine designed to compress air in order to obtain flight.  When Igor Sikorsky designed the first successful helicopter in the late 1930’s, da Vinci’s spinning wing was his inspiration.

Today, you can easily build gyrocopters with your students to explore different designs and variables.

How Does a Gyrocopter Work?

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Making Waves


Tami O'Connor, Educational Innovationsby: Tami O’Connor

Energy is transported by waves.  That’s an important concept to teach students, but it’s not always an easy one for them to understand. At the beginning of our unit on the electromagnetic spectrum, my class and I made wave models so they could all see and understand how waves work.

The kids loved this activity when we did it in class and, when I run into former students, some tell me they still have their wave models hanging from their ceilings more than 10 years after we made them!

Materials:

  • Popsicle Sticks
  • Kite String
  • Low Melt Glue Gun
  • Ruler or Yard Stick
  • Tape
  • Pen, Pencil, or Marker

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