Real Questions 7th Graders Ask about Electricity
2025-06-09
by Olivier Cleynen
by Olivier Cleynen
The authors of their physics textbook thought it would be things like “what is the relationship between voltage and current” but instead they asked me:
- How many car batteries do you need to supply Magdeburg with electricity for one day?
- How big is the world’s biggest battery?
- What happens if you listen to music and your phone falls into the water? does it stop the music or does the phone keep playing?
- Why does the LED in the circuit start to smoke when there is no resistor in front of it?
- How do solar panels transform the sunlight into electricity?
- How does it work when you push a button and the light goes on?
- When lightning strikes a lightning rod, do we get electrocuted if we stand next to it?
- Why does the current stay inside the cable?
- What happens if you stick the ohmmeter into the wall socket?
- Does a shooting star have electricity?
- How long does electricity need to run from the wall socket to my phone if the cable goes once around the Earth?
- Are the eggs of an electric eel electrical?
- Can you see electrons with a microscope?
- Do vegetables conduct electricity too?
- Do electrons break when you step on them?
- Can you send electrons from one country like Germany to America?
- If you put a lightning rod on your head, are you protected from lightning?
- Is there any way to see electrons flow?
- What happens if you connect an electrical circuit to a piece of chocolate?
- Are there also protons, electrons and lightning strikes on other planets?
- Did Volta get a electrical shock when he invented the battery?
- Do electrons and protons have different colors?
- Can fish be struck by lightning?
- Why can electricity create fire?
- Why are the electrons always moving and not standing still?
- If lightning strikes an electric car, does that charge the battery automatically?
- What happens if you jump and in the time where you are in the air you get struck by lightning?
- Can lightning strike from below?
- How many hamsters in hamster wheels would you need in order to light up light in a room?
- How many batteries do you need in order to create a strike that is exactly as strong as lightning?
- Does molten aluminum conduct electricity?
- How many people can one lightning strike kill at once?
- What happens if lightning strikes a rain drop?
- Would a lightning strike reflect in a mirror like a laser?
- If lightning strikes a corn plant field, does it produce popcorn?
- What happens if you take a swim in the lake just after the lightning has hit it?
- How does a power outage happen?
- What happens if you put 1 billion electrons in a piece of cheese?