Circuits: Circuit Analysis

When discussing circuits, I had previously thought of a circuit breaker in a house that controls each living space circuit. I also knew each individual circuit could be turned off, cutting electricity to the outlets in that area. However, if someone had asked me to explain the verbiage and steps in the process of a circuit, I would have been a tad dumbfounded. Another way I thought of circuits is somewhat like a looping racetrack with something of electric charge continually moving around. I believe I should have had a better grasp on the topic, especially to accurately portray circuits to students in the classroom.

The topic of circuits and what they do is something that does need to be taught, as it has clear real world applications (i.e.

The negatively charged electron can then jump this connection or bridge to the positive side. That bridge is what is referred to as a circuit (The Energy, 2012). The amount of electrons that cross the circuit can be controlled, giving electricity a chance to do something like heating the filament of a flashlight bulb, which will produce light. That limitation of electrons can also be called resistance. Copper wires are commonly used as a form of bridge for circuits (The Energy, 2012).

Atoms can slow down and even reverse the direction of electrons by colliding with them. During the collision, the electrons transfer and lose energy to the atoms. "This energy appears as heat, and the scattering is a resistance to the current" (The Energy, 2012). A good example to give students about how the current flows would be relating the bridge to a garden hose and the current to the water flowing through the garden hose (bridge), with the water pressure representing the circuits'

Electric circuits have electrons transferring from the negative side to the positive one. When those sides connect, the circuit is completed. At that point, the charge transforms into electrical energy. This is exhibited when each side, or pole, of a battery is connected (The Energy, 2012). This can be better shown with the D-cell battery, wire, and flashlight bulb mentioned earlier. The battery should have the wire contacting each pole as well as they bulb. The bottom of the bulb should also be touching one of the poles of the battery directly. If one side of the battery has the wire lose contact, the circuit will no longer produce the current to light the bulb.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to identify circuits, although he thought that electricity flowed through circuits from the positive side to the negative side. He was not able to understand that they actually flow the opposite way because he was not able to examine at the atomic level. However, this misunderstanding of a convention has not hindered us from creating circuits (Grusin,