Static Electricity

Preamble
Most students enter grade 6 with some knowledge of static electricity. However, they always seem very happy to play with it again. I am expected to teach static electricity as the transfer of electrons from one object to another. Interestingly, the students would not yet necessarily have studied even the existence of atoms, yet alone their structure. Thus, although I do discuss this with them, I do not test for this knowledge. My students find grasping the idea of something this small very difficult and that there is space between the sub-atomic particles is not acceptable to them. I simply assure them that this is (sort of) how scientists believe atoms are constructed but not to worry about it. We focus on electricity and the transfer of electrons which are part of an atom and leave it at that. The experiments are fun and work most of the time, unless the weather is very damp.

The class should be put in groups of two or three students and the activities done as stations.

The teacher should spend the time moving around the groups, listening to the discussions and laughing with the students at the odd things that happen.

Stations
This activity works with 5 different stations.

Chase the pop can
Equipment:
 * two empty pop cans
 * plastic ruler or rod
 * pieces of nylon, fur, silk or wool.

Question:
Can you make the pop can roll around the classroom floor without you touching it (or blowing on it!) with anything?

Dancing Fleas
Equipment:
 * some roughly ground pepper labeled "fleas".
 * plastic ruler or rod
 * pieces of nylon, fur, silk or wool.

Question:
Can you make the fleas dance?

Bend gravity
Equipment:
 * a slow flow of water from a tap
 * plastic ruler or rod
 * pieces of nylon, fur, silk or wool.

Question:
Can you make the water flow down in a bent line?

Bouncing balloons
Equipment:
 * two inflated balloons freely suspended from the ceiling hanging about 20cm apart
 * a piece of paper
 * plastic ruler or rod
 * pieces of nylon, fur, silk or wool.

Question:
Can you make the balloons bounce away from each other and then together.

Static soccer
Equipment:
 * a ping pong ball
 * two plastic rods or rulers
 * pieces of silk, fur, wool or nylon

Question:
Who will win the soccer game? Define your own nets.

Discuss the students results and laugh at some of them together.

Equipment: poker chips in black and red, or checkers.

What is static electricity
Give each student four red checkers and four black checkers. They must place the red checkers in pile in the centre of their desks and the black checkers randomly around their desk. This represents an atom. The red checkers are the protons and have a positive charge and are held together in the nucleus. (The boys will love a digression right now into the energy needed to hold the positive protons together and how that is released in bomb - no descriptions of exactly how, but enrichment. . .) The black checkers are the negative electrons surrounding the nucleus. Ask the students what overall charge their atom has. Walk up to a desk and "rub" against it and pick up an electron. Ask the student what charge his atom now has. Have three students become the "silk cloth" and they "rub" against the other students desks picking up electrons. Discuss what charge the students' atoms now have. Explain how this is what happens in electricity.

Extension
The students look up lightening or fabric softeners and find out the relation to static electricity and how it works.

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