Today in tech class we made a circuit. We were given a battery, some wires, a light bulb, and an switch. The goal was to use these items to make the light bulb light up.
It actually wasn’t as easy as it probably sounds. Since other classes had used the same wires before us, the ends of the wires were very stringy. This made our task harder since we had to wrap the ends of the wire around the screws in the light bulb, the battery, and the switch.
At first, I wasn’t able to do it. The wires wouldn’t twist around the screws and everything kept falling apart. So, I asked my friend for help. She held the items while I put the wires in and helped my screw in the nails. Thanks to her, when we flipped the switch, the light bulb lit up.
This light bulb lit up because electricity flows through a thin tungsten wire in the light bulb called the filament. The filament used in a bulb has a property called “resistance.” A filament has a lot of resistance to electricity. Therefore as a result of this, the filament heats up and starts glowing, converting electrical energy to light energy, which causes the bulb to light up.