Lesson video

Hi everybody, it's Miss Simkin here to teach your next science lesson.

I hope that you're having a good day.

Today's lesson is going to be shocking because it's all about electricity.

So, let's get started.

Our lesson question today is how has our understanding and use of electricity developed? So last lesson we spoke about how scientific ideas change over time.

How we need a brilliant idea to begin with, but it needs to be proved with evidence for it to be a scientific idea and for it to change the way that we think.

And we looked at some examples of how that science knowledge can build up.

How that science knowledge is cumulative.

And we looked at the invention of the hearing aid as an example.

Well today, we're going to look at how our knowledge of electricity has built up over time and how discoveries have built on one another to bring us the amazing electronics that we have today.

In today's lesson, we are going to follow this agenda.

We're going to start with our star words.

Then I'm going to give you a little bit of a challenge to begin with.

I'm going to see if you can decipher which electronic item came first.

You're going to have to be a detective.

Then we're going to look at an electricity timeline.

Then we're going to look at some important scientists, and then you're going to make a fact file at the end of the lesson about your favourite scientists that we've learnt about this lesson.

For this lesson, you will need a piece of paper, a pencil, and a coloured pencil.

So you can mark your work in different colours.

You're also going to need a ruler.

If you don't have those things, could you pause the video and go and get them now, please? Great.

Let's go to our star words.

This is the key vocabulary that we're going to need for this lesson.

So I'm going to say the word, and then you're going to say the word.

Electricity.

Battery.

Static electricity.

Filament.

Chronological.

Great.

So let's talk about what some of these words mean.

Now, lots of them you will be familiar with from when you studied electricity in the past.

But let's recap before we do this lesson.

So electricity is a type of energy that can be used in circuits to power electrical items. So have a look around you at the moment.

If you're in school, if you're at home, how many items can you see that are powered by electricity? They might be battery-powered like my remote here or they might be powered by mains electricity which means they plug into the wall.

Have a look around you, pause the video and count how many electrical items you can see.

How many did you count? I had about 16 from where I am sat.

So we use electricity a lot in our everyday lives.

Battery is a source of electricity that provides the power in a circuit.

So, my TV remote here is battery-powered.

It's got a battery in the back and that provides the power for the circuit inside the remote.

Static electricity is formed when an unbalanced charge occurs.

And it's normally caused by friction, by rubbing off two objects.

So if you've ever touched a door handle or something metal and got a little, little shock that's static electricity discharging.

Or you might have had a go at that common static electricity experiment, where you get a balloon and you rub it on your hair and you see if you can make it stand on end.

That is static electricity.

A filament is the, is a tiny piece of metal wire inside a light bulb.

And it's what causes the light bulb to light up because as electricity passes through the filament, through that tiny piece of wire, it causes the wire to glow.

Okay? And that's how the light bulb lights up.

And our last word, chronological means the order in which things happen.

So we're going to be putting things in chronological order today.

That means we're going to start with the first thing that happened and end with the last.

So for example, if I was to put my day in chronological order, it would be like this, woke up, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth, did some work, had lunch, did some more work, went to bed.

Not a very fun day for me.

Okay? But that would be chronological order.

It's the order in which things actually happened.

I didn't go to bed first and then have my lunch and then have my breakfast.

That would not be chronological order.

That's not in the correct order.

Okay.

This is your chance now to use your detective and your observation and any prior knowledge that you have to try and put these events in the correct order, so in chronological order.

So which do you think humans invented first? Was it the mobile phone, electric lights in our home, electric iron, telephone, iPad, or electric street lighting? Look at all the pictures, the six of them.

And I want you to write down all six in the order that you think they were invented first.

Okay? Don't worry if you don't get the answer right.

Why would you? I haven't taught it to you yet.

Okay.

I just want you to have a go.

Pause the video and have a go at this now, please.

Great.

Well done.

Let's see if any of your guesses were correct.

So this is the correct order that these electrical appliances were first invented.

So the first telephone was first.

You might have been able to tell that because the photo looks the oldest, it was black and white.

So the first telephone was invented in 1876.

Then we had the first electric street lighting in 1877.

Then just three years later, we had the first electric lights in a home in 1880.

Then the first electric iron in 1901, then the first mobile phone.

So there was quite a big gap between the first telephone and the first mobile phone, you know, a kind of phone that doesn't have any wires, that's mobile.

And then last, the first iPad in 2010.

So only around 10 years ago.

Give yourself a tick if you've got any of those right.

And well done if you did, that was tricky.

If there are any that you got in the wrong order, that's okay.

We're going to put them into a timeline later.

So you can just underline the ones that were incorrect.

Pause the video and do that for me now.

Great.

Okay.

Now, in this part of the lesson, we're going to draw a timeline.

Before we start, I'd like you to set your timeline up so that as we're going, after each section, I'll say pause the video and you can add to your timeline as we go.

When you draw your timeline, I would like you please to make your page landscape like this.

Not portrait, landscape and draw your timeline across like this, that will give you the most room.

It's important that you use your ruler as well so it's nice and neat.

So can you please draw your timeline.

Don't worry about the number of intervals.

Just get your line written across the top with your starting interval.

Pause the video and do that for me now, please.

Okay.

Great.

Now, I'm going to tell you about some of the really important moments in electrical history, because all of those appliances we just learnt about, the first telephone, the first iPad, the first street lights.

None of them could have been invented without these series of discoveries and these scientific ideas being tested.

And the evidence gathered, that we're going to learn in this timeline.

Okay.

So, it all started in 500 BC when Thales, a Greek scientist discovered ele.

sorry, discovered static electricity.

So in one of his experiments, he investigated amber, which is like a fossilised tree sap.

And he discovered that if you rubbed it with a piece of animal fur, the amber would attract lightweight objects, such as feathers.

Now that is static electricity, and he didn't have a name for it at the time.

But that is when it was first discovered.

Can you please pause the video and add this to your timeline.

Okay.

Next in our timeline, we're going to jump forward a really long time.

We can't put everything in our timeline today and to do with electricity, but here's the next quite important thing.

So in 1729, Stephen Grey, who was an English scientist demonstrated that electricity isn't just static, but that it can flow through wires.

So that's really important.

Without that discovery, we wouldn't know, we wouldn't have all the electrical circuits that power all of the appliances in our homes.

And that we learnt about at the beginning of the lesson.

Can you pause the video and add this to your timeline, please.

Great.

Okay.

And then in 1793, the first batteries were made.

So these were first invented by Alessandro Volta, who was an Italian scientist.

And he made the first batteries.

Now this was a really important discovery because until batteries were made, we couldn't have any portable devices.

Everything would have had to been plugged into a socket, but now we have things that are portable, that don't have any wires, that are mobile.

So that's a very important discovery.

Can you pause the video and add this to your timeline, please.

Brilliant.

Okay.

And then the next one is this, the first filament lamp is invented.

We learnt about the filament in our star words.

Can you remember what the filament is? Pause the video, sorry don't pause video just search your screen.

Yeah, it's that thin piece of metal that glows when electricity passes through it.

So without the filament lamp, we wouldn't have electric lights.

We'd still be using candles or gas lamps, which aren't very safe or efficient.

So in 1873, this is when Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison invented the filament lamp.

Pause the video and add this to your timeline.

Okay.

Great.

Now, I would like you to add these electrical inventions to your timeline.

So these are the ones we learnt about in the beginning of the lesson, and you can see I've put them in chronological order for you.

And they all come after this event here.

So they all come after 1873.

So you should be adding them here on your timeline.

It's okay if you add some below and some above, and if you need more space.

And if you're getting cramped, you can get your ruler and draw a big, long line to the bottom of your page and write a label there so you can squeeze them all in.

Okay.

So can you add these items to your timeline.

Pause the video and do that for me now.

Great.

Fantastic.

So hopefully that timeline allows you to see that progress of scientific ideas about electricity over time.

And you can see that we never would've got to the iPad if it hadn't been for all of the events that happened before.

Now we're going to learn about some important scientists who are important because of their contributions to the field of electricity.

So, what I'd like you to do please, is to make some notes in this part of the lesson, under these three headings.

So these are three scientists.

Michael Faraday, Lewis Howard Latimer, and Mildred Dresselhaus.

In fact, let's practising those.

I'm going to say them and then you're going to say them.

Michael Faraday.

Lewis Howard Latimer.

Mildred Dresselhaus.

Good job.

So, I'd like you to write Michael Faraday, then leave yourself some space to make notes, maybe like five lines.

And then Lewis Howard Latimer, again leave five lines, then Mildred Dresselhaus.

Can you pause the video to set your headings up now, please.

Great.

Okay.

Let's learn about our first scientist.

This is Michael Faraday.

Now, it's up to you.

You can either make notes while I'm speaking about Michael Faraday or you can wait until I finish, pause the video and then make your notes.

And I'll give you some prompt questions to help you with that.

It's up to you.

Different people prefer to work in different ways.

Either way, listen carefully to Michael Faraday's story.

So Michael Faraday was born in 1791 in London.

He didn't come from a rich family and so he only had a very basic education.

And at the age of 14, he became an apprentice to a bookbinder, so somebody who puts books together.

And over the next seven years while he was working there, he educated himself by reading all of the books that he was binding.

Having attended one of the lectures of a famous chemist called Humphry Davy, he asked to be his assistant.

Now at this point in history, scientists had a much better understanding of electricity and electric circuits due to the work of many talented physicists, including Alessandro Volta, who's on our timeline.

And so Michael Faraday was working and doing work based on those discoveries that scientists had already made.

And in 1821, he invented the first electric motor.

What did he invent? An electric motor.

Brilliant.

And that's a device that uses electricity to move things.

And this device would change the world forever.

It had a huge impact because it allowed electricity to be used to power vehicles like cars and trains and also moving machinery.

Like you'd find in factories.

So had a huge impact.

Okay.

Now is your chance, if you haven't already to pause the video and make some notes about Michael Faraday.

I would make, I would use these three questions.

So if you answer these three questions, then you'll include everything you need in your notes.

What was Michael Faraday's background? What did Michael Faraday discover or invent? And what did his discoveries lead to? You can pause the video and make your notes here.

You can also go back and watch that bit of the video again, if you need to.

Pause the video and make your notes now, please.

Great.

Good job.

So for Michael Faraday's background, you might have written about how he wasn't very educated, he was born in London, he worked for a bookbinder and then taught himself by reading all the books.

What did he discover? Well, this is important.

He discovered the electric motor.

So make sure you've got that written down.

And his discoveries led to moving vehicles and machinery.

So you can give yourself a tick if you've included those things.

And then let's go on to our next scientist.

So this is Lewis Howard Latimer.

And again, same here, you can choose whether you'll make notes while I'm talking, or if you'll wait till the end and pause the video and make your notes there.

So, Lewis Howard Latimer was born in 1848 in America.

And he was not born in a very easy time to be a black child in America.

His parents had escaped from slavery only six years before he was born.

However, despite this Lewis Howard Latimer became an extremely successful scientist.

He was so skilled at technical drawing.

So that's scientific diagrams of machinery and electronics that while he was working at the U.

S.

patent office, he became the chief draughtsman, the person in charge for 11 years.

He was so highly talented with his scientific drawing with his technical drawing that he was employed by Alexander Graham Bell.

Does anybody know what Alexander Graham Bell invented? Can you remember? I'm going to give you a hint.

He invented the telephone.

Okay? So he was a great scientist as well and he employed Lewis Howard Latimer to help him to develop the patent for his telephone invention.

Then later on in his career, Lewis Howard Latimer started looking at filament bulbs and although he didn't invent them, we've learned about who invented them.

Can you remember? It was on our timeline.

Have a have a look, see if you wrote it down.

If you didn't write down the scientist if you can remember it begins with an E, Edison, it was Thomas Edison.

Okay.

But the problem with Thomas Edison's first light bulb design is that the filament burnt out in only a few hours.

So that means each light bulb would only last a few hours.

So Lewis Howard Latimer decided he was going to try and improve this.

And he did lots of experiments and he discovered that he could improve it by putting a piece of like a cardboard envelope around it.

And this prevented the carbon from breaking up so quickly.

And it meant that the light bulbs lasted much longer.

What did he do to light bulbs? Search your screen.

That's right.

He discovered that you could put a bit of cardboard around them and then they would last much longer.

This was really important because it made light bulbs much less expensive.

It meant they would last much longer and it meant that more and more people could afford them and could have them in their homes.

So without Lewis Howard Latimer, light wouldn't have been affordable for all And we wouldn't have, we wouldn't all have light bulbs in our house.

Only very, very rich people would be able to have light bulbs in their house.

And they'd have to change them every two hours.

Okay.

Can you please, if you haven't already make your notes about Lewis Howard Latimer.

You can use these questions to help you.

What was Lewis Howard Latimer's background? What was he skilled at or skilled at? What other scientists did he work with? And what did his discoveries lead to? Pause the video and answer these questions now.

Great.

So for Lewis Howard's background, you might have written that he was born in America, that his parents were, had escaped from slavery.

He was skilled at technical drawing.

And other scientists that he worked with were Alexander Graham bell and Thomas Edison.

And his discoveries led to a light bulb lasting a much longer time and becoming affordable for everybody.

What did his discoveries lead to? Search your screen.

Great.

The light bulb lasting a much longer time and becoming affordable for everybody.

Okay.

Here's our last scientist.

This is Mildred Dresselhaus.

Again, you can choose if you're going to make your notes while I speak or pause at the end and make them there.

So Mildred Dresselhaus was a Polish Jewish immigrant to the United States.

And that's because she, her family had to flee, had to run away from Poland because they were worried about tensions with the Nazi party in Germany and the rise of anti-Jewish attitudes in the region at the time.

And so they emigrated to America where they thought, where they felt safer.

Mildred was always interested in science and she became a very, very successful scientist.

She was particularly interested in the properties of materials and how they behaved when electricity passed through them.

She decided to focus her work on carbon because nobody else was investigating it at the time.

She created new materials from pieces of graphite, which is a form of carbon.

And although her findings were really complicated, what she learnt about the new materials was made, made them very useful in the development of the first lithium-ion batteries.

Okay.

Let's just practise saying that.

Lithium-ion battery.

So a lithium-ion battery is really important because it's a rechargeable battery.

So, the batteries in my TV remote are not rechargeable.

When they run out, I take them out and I put new batteries in.

Can you think of any electronic devices you have that are rechargeable or that somebody in your house might have.

Yes.

So things like iPads and phones and laptops are rechargeable batteries.

So they have a different kind of battery than the one in my remote.

They have a lithium-ion battery.

What kind of battery do they have? Lithium-ion battery.

Exactly.

So her findings led to the invention of the lithium-ion battery.

And all of today's electronics, including smart phones, computers, renewable energy generators exist because of the work that Mildred did in developing these new materials.

Okay, can you please, if you haven't already, make your notes about Mildred Dresselhaus.

So what was her background? What did she discover? And what did her discoveries lead to? Pause the video to do this now, please.

Great.

Good job.

So her background was that she was an emigrant to the United States, to America because she had to flee her country due to the Nazis and the persecution of Jews.

What did she discover? She discovered new materials.

And her discoveries led to the lithium-ion battery, which is a rechargeable battery.

Okay, so now you can choose between those three scientists that we've just learnt about.

You can choose your favourite scientist, and you're going to take your notes and you're going to write them up into a neat fact file, please.

So, for your fact file, you're going to have a heading, that's the name of your scientist.

So for example, Mildred Dresselhaus, and you're going to underline it.

And then you're going to have three subheadings.

Their background, their major discoveries and the implications of their work.

So, for example, for Mildred Dresselhaus for Mildred Dresselhaus you'd write about where she was born, why she was an emigrant, in backgrounds.

Then in major discoveries, you'd write about her new materials, then the implications, that's like the impact.

That's what her discoveries led to.

So that's where you'd write about the lithium-ion battery.

Okay.

Within this fact file, you could also draw some pictures as well, if you wanted to.

So you could draw a picture of their major discovery.

So you could draw a picture of a, of a battery for Mildred Dresselhaus or you could try and draw a picture of the scientist themselves.

Can you pause the video and use your notes to write your fact file.

Great.

Good job.

That brings us to the end of our lesson.

Well done for all of your hard work today.

You've done loads today and you've learnt lots and lots, I'm really impressed.

Don't forget to do your end of lesson quiz please just before you go and remember to have a fantastic rest of your day.

I had a really great lesson and I hope that you did too and I will see you back here for another science lesson soon.

Bye everybody.