The ENERGY BALL REPORT

By: Yasamin Abbaszadegan

For: Mr. Chung

Feb 9, 2012

In a series circuit the light bulbs are connected to the energy source (battery) by one component (wire). There is only one path in a series circuit in which the current can flow. The current in a series circuit goes through every component in the circuit and it stays constant. (2) There are some advantage and disadvantages to this way of designing. For instance if the circuit opens or closes by a switch or a bulb burns out the entire circuit would operate or stop operating. This is a disadvantage because for example if an apartment's electrical system uses series circuit for their lighting, if one light bulb burn out, all other electrical devices in the house would stop working as well. A parallel circuit is a little different from the series circuit; it has multiple paths for the current to flow. To make a parallel circuit, two or more components are connected in parallel. At least, it has two light bulbs or other electrical device.(2)  This design is more efficient to use in households because if a certain place in the circuit was opened not every electrical device in the circuit would stop working but only the switch for the specific bulb would stop working.

In our class every group were given an energy ball that had a tiny circuit inside it and had two metal plates on each side. We had made many experiments on how to make the ball lighten and make sounds. Conductivity of materials which means having atoms with loosely bound electrons that can be easily transferred to neighboring atoms, are important in success of such experiments. (1) We had observed that some materials make the ball work and some don't, for instance when the tips of two fingers or the palms of a person's hand touched the metal plates, the ball lightened but when we touched the plates by the back of our hands or by the hair on our hands it didn’t work or worked very weakly. The reason that the ball was activated was due to the conductivity created within the circuit, through hands and bodies of students.  Dampness and moisture on hands creates better conductivity, while dryness on hands makes poor conductivity and in these cases the balls were not activated.  Where materials have atoms with tightly held electrons that are not transferred anywhere, they become insulators. (2)

I understood that I had worked on my report not ahead of time and I had worked on it in the last minute giving me less time. I also didn’t review the sheets that the teacher had given so that I would ask some questions that I had confronted while writing this report. "PHYSICS concepts and connections" and "Hyperphysics" were the two references I used to write this report.

References:

(1)     Nave, C.R., (1011) Hyperphysics, Georgia State University.

(2)     Nowikow, l, & Heimbecker, B., (2001) Physics, Toronto/Vancouver, Canada: Irwing Publishing