Real Questions 7th Graders Ask about Electricity
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?