Lesson video

Hello, scientists.

My name is Mr. Wilshire, and today we are going to be having a look at electrical appliances of the future.

What an interesting subject.

Let's dive in.

Our learning outcome today is to invent your own electrical appliance for the future and describe how it would improve your lives.

Here are some of the keywords for our lesson.

I'll say them and you repeat them back to me.

The first word is electricity.

Next, is electrical appliance.

Now, engineer.

And diagram.

Great job.

Here are some of the definitions of all of the keywords that we've just gone through.

Now, don't worry, these are gonna come out all throughout the lesson as we go through.

So if there's one or two that you're not sure about, have a quick recap of what they mean now, before moving on.

Let's look at the first part of our lesson, electricity in our lives.

Let's get into it.

Now, electricity is really essential, isn't it? It's how I am able to talk to you through a screen.

Now, it'd be really difficult to imagine your life without it, so I wonder how these different electrical appliances would help you in your daily life.

Pause a video here, and have a discussion about some of the items that you can see.

How do they help you and what do they do? Brilliant discussing everybody.

Now, let's have a look at some of these different items. There are three pictures here, that the first one is some sort of clock, a radio controlled clock in fact.

There's also a hair dryer, and oh, there's a tablet there as well.

Now your alarm clock will use electricity to wake you up.

It might be plugged into the wall, and use main's electricity or it may use batteries, which means that you could take it anywhere with you as long as the batteries don't run out of course.

The hairdryer here uses electricity to dry your hair.

It can be really hot, sometimes it can be cool as well though.

It needs to be plugged into the wall using main's electricity again.

So there's no batteries here.

Let's look at the tablet now.

Now, your tablet uses electricity to play games and to learn, and you also need to charge this up using mains electricity.

There's a little battery inside, so you can take the tablet anywhere with you, but when the battery runs out, it's no use anymore, is it? So you need to make sure that it's charged.

Now, I wonder if electrical appliances have always been around for humans to use.

Let's have a little think.

Have they? Now, I certainly remember a long way back, and I can definitely say that electrical appliances have been around as long as I've been alive.

Well, we've got Alex over here, and there's Alex's dad and Alex's grandpa as well.

Now, Alex's dad says that when he was your age, there were no mobile phones.

There was just a phone plugged into the electrical socket at home.

Yeah, I remember phones like that as well.

They were usually plugged in at the wall.

Sometimes they needed electricity, and sometimes they were just attached with one wire to the wall.

When you pick them up and push the buttons, you were able to call anybody else, but you could only do that in your home.

Alex's grandpa says that when he was your age, he got his first TV.

Wow.

Well, I can always remember a TV being around in my house.

I wonder if you guys can as well.

The picture in his time though was black and white, and there was no remote control, so you had to get up, go over to the TV, and change the channel yourself using the dials and the buttons on top.

Wow, I can't imagine what live would be like there.

Early electrical appliances have been around since the 1800s but it was in the 1920s that inventors and engineers created new appliances for the home, which require electricity to work.

Brooms and carpet beaters were replaced by vacuum cleaners, and ice boxes were replaced by fridges and freezers.

Wow.

There's lots of different things that I can remember using electricity, but I'm certainly not old enough to remember a carpet beater or an icebox.

I always have had a fridge freezer, and I've always had a vacuum cleaner in my life.

A carpet beater would've been something that you would've taken all of the carpets outside and you would've used it to beat all the dust and all the dirt off, and it would all fly up in the air.

An icebox is somewhere that they would store ice, and people would actually have to come around and deliver ice to you, so you could put it inside this box and keep your things frozen inside.

If there was no electricity, there was nowhere to keep things cool, was there? In fact, there were lots and lots of houses, especially in bigger cities that were never designed to have electricity put into them, so at some point in their time, they've had to have people come in and drill big holes in the wall to make sure that the wires can go all the way through and reach every single room.

It's amazing, isn't it? I wonder if any of you can imagine living in a home without any electricity at all.

I don't think I'd be able to see things clearly enough.

There certainly wouldn't be enough light.

By the 1970s though, many homes in the UK had a colour television.

There were only three channels that you could watch though, and you can see in early television there.

It does look quite small, doesn't it? Certainly not as big as some of the other televisions that I've seen in different houses nowadays.

It wasn't until the mid 1980s that mobile phones became widely available in the UK.

Many of these though, only had a few hours of battery life before they needed charging again.

You can see one down there.

That's gigantic, isn't it? Mobile phones these days couldn't fit in the palm of your hand really easily.

That one looks like it's probably the size of two hands there, and there's even an aerial on top, so you have to extend the aerial in order to get a reception.

Now, I remember my dad had a phone a little bit like this, and when he went to work, he would actually take extra batteries to ensure that he had enough power to call home all the way through the day.

But that was revolutionary for him because he was unable to take business calls at work whenever and wherever he was.

So let's stop and have a think.

Why are electrical appliances invented? Pause the video here and have a discussion.

Which one of these statements is correct? Electrical appliances are invented to help improve our lives.

They weren't just invented to win design competitions or make adverts for television.

No.

Electrical appliances were invented to improve people's lives and make things better for everybody.

Let's recap again then.

Which of these professionals are most likely to invent and design electrical appliances and help improve our lives? Have a look at the different statements there, pause the video and restart when you are able to come up with your answer.

Scientists and engineers are definitely the kind of professionals that we would need to invent things.

Hairdressers and beauticians would certainly be able to invent things, but I dunno if they'd be able to come up with the wiring that's needed inside an electrical appliance.

They might need an engineer to look at it.

Teachers and head teachers and sports persons as well.

I don't think they have the technical know-how to be able to put together an electrical appliance.

So let's get onto the first task of our lesson.

I need you to carry out your own research by talking to adults at school, or at home and find out which electrical appliances were invented during their lives.

I wonder if there are any electrical appliances that remember growing up without.

And what did they use before this? Which appliances do they remember being invented, and what difference did it make to their lives? Hmm.

Well, maybe they're old enough to remember one of these, a CD, or a DVD.

They would've had to put into a machine in order to make things work.

You don't have to do things as much like that nowadays.

You can just do it all on a phone, or a tablet or a computer.

Talking to computers, I wonder if the computer games that they played needed some sort of joystick, a little bit like this.

Maybe they didn't have computer games in their home and they had to go somewhere to use one of these.

Well, have a discussion with the people around your school, restart the video when you're ready to continue.

Hopefully you've had a chance now to complete this task and ask different people around your school or home about the electrical appliances that they can remember.

There's two examples here that could be similar to something that people have said that you discussed with.

One person says, "I remember the invention of the Walkman.

I could listen to my favourite music on cassette tapes through headphones, wherever I went.

I didn't have to use a record player at home." Wow, that is revolutionary, isn't it? Being able to take your music anywhere.

I think nowadays we can do that anyway, can't we? It can all go through one device, whereas back then, you would've had to have had a Walkman, a tape player, or a CD player on your person, and all the CDs and tapes.

The second person here says that they remember when mobile phones were invented.

"When I was a child, we had a telephone in the living room and it was plugged into the wall.

It had a wire and sat on a special telephone table." Oh yeah, these were big pieces of furniture.

They would go into the corner or next to the door somewhere, wherever the wires came into the house, and that's where you would have your telephone.

Let's move on now to the next part of our lesson, electricity in the future.

That sounds really interesting, doesn't it? Wonder what we're gonna be finding out more about here? Scientists and engineers are always looking for different ways to invent and design electrical appliances to help solve problems. They'll develop even more uses in the future.

Now, smart clothing, for example, is something that can track your location.

You don't just need your phone or other device on you, You can actually have a tracking chip inside your clothing that can help to track you.

Very useful if you're an explorer.

Now, here is another example.

It's a prosthetic hand made using a 3D printer.

3D printers are great because they can create models similar to human bones.

They're not just used for making toys or keyrings, for example.

Robotic tools are really useful because they can be a lot more precise and flexible.

This means that people like surgeons can perform operations that would otherwise be too difficult.

Here are two pictures.

You can see surgeons in an operating theatre, and another one with a robotic arm.

Hmm, I don't know who I would trust to do a surgical procedure on me.

I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to let a robotic arm do some surgical work on me.

Smart watches and devices that people wear can help to monitor their health and their athletic performance.

You can see here that there's a smart watch, which is monitoring some heart rate there.

It's really useful if you are an athlete or if you're just trying to get a little bit fitter.

The invention of Bluetooth means that these devices don't need to connect with wires.

That's really useful.

Bluetooth is a fantastic piece of technology.

That means that a lot of things nowadays are wireless.

You don't need to plug it into your device in order for it to work.

You can just connect.

You do have to make sure that it's charged though.

So I wonder if any of you own electrical devices that use Bluetooth.

How are smart devices used to improve our lives then? Two questions there to consider.

Have a discussion with a talk partner, or have a think yourself.

Restart the video when you are ready to continue.

I hope that the discussions you have were really informative and you've come up with a good list of different things that use Bluetooth in your lives.

Now, I know that I use my smart devices to help track me if I'm out for a walk somewhere, especially if I'm somewhere that I don't know.

That certainly improved my life because I don't need to take a big map with me everywhere I go.

Let's have a look now at electricity in the future again.

Here, we can see an electric vehicle, which is charging.

Now, many people believe that electric cars are the vehicles of the future because they're healthier for the planet than petrol or diesel cars.

Engineers suggest that we may be flying in electric aeroplanes by 2030.

Wow! so let's stop and have a think.

Which of these are electrical appliances that could help our lives in the future? Have a look through the different statements there, and decide with somebody next to you or have a think yourself.

Restart the video when you're ready to answer the question.

Hopefully you've had some good discussions there.

Let's have a look at the answers.

Well, it could be lots of these here.

These different electrical appliances could help our lives in the future by tracking our location, it could perform very careful surgery, and electric aeroplanes as well means that we are burning less fossil fuels.

Wood burning stoves are around at the moment now, aren't they? And they can help warm buildings, not something that's coming out in the future.

Aisha here wants to be an engineer when she's older.

She's got lots of different ideas about electrical appliances that could improve our lives.

She scribbles her ideas in a notebook.

It's very messy, but she does understand everything that's being written.

I wonder if you have a notepad, a little bit like this, and maybe only you know what some of the drawings or diagrams are.

She says, "What would be the best way for me to share my designs and inventions with other people so I can show them my ideas?" Hmm, that is a good question, isn't it? I wonder how she could share her ideas.

So what do you think? Have a discussion with someone near you, or think by yourself.

Restart the video when you're ready to continue.

Aisha draws a diagram to share her ideas.

She's got a headband that vibrates when you've done enough steps.

Signal from shoe to headband by Bluetooth, and a sensor in the soul of her trainers to count her steps.

She's labelled her diagram to show the different parts to her design, just to show what they are and help people understand what it is and what it does.

That's a really good idea, isn't it? Because not everyone is able to understand exactly what you mean by your drawings sometimes, are they? She says that these trainers help you keep track of your steps.

So stop and think.

Which of these could be used to present scientific ideas? Is it poems, drawings, a dance or diagrams? Have a chat with someone close to you or have a think yourself.

Restart the video when you're ready to continue.

Yeah, I think the best way to answer this question is with a diagram or some drawings.

A poem is a good idea, but sometimes people aren't too sure what your rhyming means, and a dance might be quite hard to interpret.

Although it would look really nice.

So here is our last task of this lesson.

You need to think like an engineer.

Invent and design a new electrical appliance that will improve someone's life in the future.

You need to draw a label diagram of your design and then include a paragraph about what it is and what it does.

Have a really good think here about a need.

What kind of needs do you know about in the world or your life, or maybe someone else's life? How can you fulfil that need with this electrical appliance? How is it going to help people? Really, it's like designing your own superhero gadget, isn't it? Pause the video and continue when you are ready to share your ideas.

I would really love to see some of the ideas that you came up with.

I'm sure that they are interesting and you've had a really good think about how they could help other people.

So, one example I've got for you here is an air jacket with a temperature sensor inside.

Now it can track how hot you are, and when you are too cold air is pumped into it, and it puffs up to provide some insulation.

There's elastic at the wrist and waste to stop the air escaping, and when you warm up, the air is then released.

You can see my diagram's there with the person with a very nice bobble hat as well.

There's a little temperature sensor in the back, and there's an air pump in the hood and it all pumps up, and of course, the elastic stops the air from escaping.

So, when you are cold, everything will inflate and it'll feel nice and warm and insulated.

I think this invention will be really useful for someone either walking to school in the winter, or maybe if you are an explorer, exploring somewhere cold and treacherous.

So let's recap some of our learning then.

Scientists and engineers invent and design different electrical appliances to help improve our lives.

Scientific ideas can be presented using labelled scientific drawings and diagrams, and you can see an electrical engineer there creating a diagram using a piece of software.

It looks a bit like a car on that picture, but maybe it's got some rocket boosters as well.

Hopefully, this lesson has inspired you to create some of your own drawings and some of your own ideas.

Who knows, maybe you'll be an engineer of the future as well.

I be Mr. Wilshire.

Thank you very much for listening.