BREAK THAT

CIRCUIT!

By: Ms. Roth - the science gal!


Imagine that!
Place your head on your desk, take a
moment to take a deep breath in and
close your eyes.
Imagine you are in your kitchen
preparing breakfast for your family. First
thing first, you know your dad likes to
drink coffee, so you begin to prepare his
coffee in the electric coffee pot. Your
mom doesn’t like coffee, she likes tea so
you fill the kettle with water and plug it
in and turn it on right beside the coffee
maker. Your sister sally likes toast for
breakfast so you plug in the toast to the
outlet just down the counter. As you
press the button down, the power to all
three appliances turns off.. You try
plugging them in again and nothing
happens. Your house is broke!! What
happened? And why?
Circuit Breakers
Circuit breakers are installed in all
buildings that use electricity. These are
safety devices to help prevent circuit
overload and possible short circuits or
fires. How many of you have seen on
of these in your houses?
When a breaker sense that too much
electricity is flowing through, it will
switch off and break the circuit and all
flow of electricity.
 Fuses
Fuses are like circuit breakers, but smaller.
Essentially they break the circuit and cause
the flow of electricity to stop. Fuses are not
switches though, they are made of
combustible materials, that combust when
too much electricity flows through. Fuses that
do blow, need to be replaced to restore power
to the system. You might find fuses in places
like your cars, ATV’s and trailers. These
devices need alot of power to run different
components of the device, that is why they
require fuses.
Have you ever seen one of these before?
 Lets watch it in SLOOOOOOOOO-MOOOOOO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGFnooeA6Iw
 1. You each will receive a number between 1 and 4
2. Heads down, 2 people will be chosen to be a
fuse. This is a SECRET!
3. Heads-up
4. Music will play. Ms. Roth will call a number,
those people must stand and move to the music

Electric excitedly.
5. Ms. Roth will call another number these

Breakdown game!
students wil continue to move
6. When Ms. Roth makes eye contact with a fuse,
the fuse will bend over and remain that way.
7. As excited electrons begin to notice the broken
YOUR MASKS NEED TO BE ON fuse. They will stop moving and remain
FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE standing until all the electrons are still.
PERIOD!! 8. The round is over when all electricity flow has
stopped.
** You must be moving to the beat of the music
sometimes faster, sometimes slower but you
must be moving!
What’s an electricians favourite type of
ice-cream?
Shock-a-lot!