Experiment 1

Experiment #1 Lighting Just One Bulb

Step 1: Cut a bulb out of the string. Leave plenty of wire attached to the bulb. You can use a scissors or wire cutter.

Step 2: Cut the plastic insulation off the ends of each wire. You can do this with a knife (be careful), a side cutter, or a wire stripper. All these you can find at a dollar store.

Step 3. The two wires will look like this when they are ready. Remember that electricity can flow through most metals, but not materials like plastic, wood or glass.

Step 4. Test your light with different cells. Try a D, a C, an AA, and an AAA if you have some of these.

D Cell                                                        C Cell                                                  AA Cell                                                   AAA Cell

Step 5. Compare the brightness of each bulb. (We are assuming that each of the cells you used in the test are good!) Examine the pictures above.  What conclusions do you draw from this experiment?

Discussion: The bulb lights when there is enough electricity to heat the filament. The cells we use here are all the same voltage or potential electrical energy of 1.5 Volts. It does not matter how big the cell when lighting a bulb like this. If they are all rated at 1.5 Volts, they will all light the bulb with equal brightness. The only difference here is how long a cell will last.  We will look at this in another experiment, but for now here is a chart on battery capacity. The larger the mah rating, the longer the battery will last.

              mah    drain

If you wanted to run your bulb a very long time, then a cell like this hobby cell would be a good plan!  It will last a long, long time!