Science Fair Experiments that get good grades – Project #52 - Electricity experiments

Have you ever thought about science fair experiments that involve electricity? One of the things you could do is test various materials to determine if they conduct electricity well or not. In this project, I’ll go over the steps involved in doing an electricity experiment about conductors.

Some science fair experiments are really difficult, but I would say that the difficulty level for this project is rather mild. It also will only take a few days and won’t cost a whole lot of money. In fact, most of the materials are readily available. Remember that you are working with electricity, so you will need to take precautions and watch out for electric shock.

Electricity flows well through certain materials, but through others, not as well. Conductive materials are the ones that electricity flows freely through. Materials that do not allow the electric flow through that much are known as insulators. The more conductive a material, the lower the resistance. A material with a high resistance is a good insulator. Common uses for insulators and conductors are in the building of circuits. For example, copper wire used in a circuit is coated in plastic, which is an insulator for the conductor, copper.

Can you think of any other materials that can be good conductors or insulators in electricity science fair experiments? In this project you can make your very own light bulb circuit to test different types of materials. By doing this you will determine if the materials are conductors or insulators.

Before you begin the project, there are some important terms and concepts you ought to know. They are: circuits, electricity, currents, resistance, conductors, electrons and insulators.

By the way, getting a free copy of Easy Steps to Award-Winning Science Fair Projects will help you through your project.

What you will need for this experiment:

·    A variety of small bits of material to test (paper clips, aluminum foil, wood, rubber bands, strings, and so forth)

·    6 Volt battery

·    3 leads of wire that have alligator clips on both ends (color doesn’t matter, but for the sake of this project we will refer to them as ‘red,’ ‘black,’ and ‘yellow’)

·    6 Volt light bulb that have leads of wire

a flat surface for insulating such as a cutting board

Steps for the Experimental Procedure:

1.     Set up the circuit board to be used during testing the materials. For this, you need three bits of wire that have an alligator clip on the ends.

2.     Making sure it is securely clipped, fix the black wire onto the negative terminal of the battery.

3.     Then, fix the red wire onto the positive terminal of the battery.

4.     At the other end of the black wire, attach it to the light bulb leads.

5.     Next, affix the yellow wire’s clip to the second light bulb’s lead.

6.     Between the open ends of the yellow and red wires, you are going to connect the different materials.

7.     Create a data table to show the results. Include a column for each of the following headings: Types of Materials, Sources of Materials, Level of Brightness of each of the Light Bulbs (dim, bright, off).

8.     Put the first of the materials in the circuit.  Do this by clipping to the red clip one end and the clipping to the yellow clip the other end.

9.     Did this make your light bulb illuminate?  If so, how bright did it get? Record the results on your table.

10. Repeat the eighth and ninth steps for every different material that you intend to test. Write down what your Ohm-meter reading is on the data table each time.

11. Analyze how the various materials compare to one another. Did some of the materials cause the light bulb to be brighter while others barely light up?

12. Using your results, make different categories of the materials. Place materials with a high brightness reading into the conductor category. Place materials with a low brightness in the category of poor conductors. And, place the materials with no brightness in a category called insulators.

Great science fair experiments always have variations. Something you can do for a variation on the experiment is to try using a circuit board setup in the same way to test various lengths and sizes of wire. Is the same amount of current carried for all the different wires? Which wires are better, long or short?