Energy that works!

 During this unit we learned about electricity and followed the general theme of sustainability and how we can utilize renewable energy sources. For our FE we talked to Farr Associates, who are designing our new school space and talked about their efforts to utilize sustainable designs to cut carbon emissions. Our AP is asking us to build a circuit that has two batteries, a switch that would shut off the whole circuit and a switch that shuts off one portion of a circuit. There also needed to be three resistors. 

My initial circuit

Circuit Diagram

Two of the resistors represent LED lights throughout the house while one is supposed to represent a tv.

Circuit with cover

Each of my batteries has 1.5 volts. 

8 ohms is the total resistance.

The amps flowing through each section is ⅜ amps

My design applies to SDG7 because it relates to having a reliable energy source. Because the entire circuit has two types of circuits in them, parallel and series, if the parallel circuit loses power the series circuit will still be active.

The switches act as an insulator to stop the flow of energy through parts of the circuits. The batteries are the conductor because they give off energy and the wires allow for the current to travel throughout the circuit. The lightbulbs are resistors because they let some energy flow through but some of it is used to emit the light.

A problem I encountered while designing my circuit was just trying to figure out where I needed to place my switches to match with the right resistor. I overcame this by simply just playing around with my design and figuring what worked and what didn’t.

Overall, I enjoyed being able to explore circuits and see how we can make efficient choices with how we power our homes and buildings. Especially because the Earth is running out of fossil fuels we must find a new way to make power.