Squishy Circuits

Building Circuits: When you are building your first circuit, you don't need insulating dough. Basically the insulating dough acts as a barrier between the circuit to turn it off so that you can keep the two sides of the current from connecting. If you attach both battery wands to the same piece of dough, nothing will happen. You will always have to connect the wands to two separate pieces of dough.

Making a circuit is easy. The long end of the light (positive) must go into the same dough that the red (positive) wand goes into. The short end of the light goes into the same piece of dough as the black (negative) wand.

Safety note - touch the live LED wires to the live batter pack = shock! Never touch the bare wires to the battery when it is turn on, and don't grab the battery wands when the battery pack is on.

Learning Objectives for Squishy Circuits:

• Define, recognize, and build a closed circuit.
• Define, recognize, and assemble series circuits
• Explain why a closed circuit is required for any electrical device to operate.
• Describe the transformations of energy that occur in the circuit.
• Distinguish the difference between a parallel circuit and a series circuit.