Curated OER
Static Electricity and Lightning
Students study concepts related to static electricity, based on a single example: lightning. They explain how static electricity, lightning, and sparks are all related phenomena. They draw a diagram illustrating the negative and positive...
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More About Static Electricity
Students examine the concept that static electricity is a phenomenon that involves positive and negative charges. They explore the Static Electricity section of the Science, Technology and Engineering website to learn more about the...
Virginia Department of Education
Electricity and Circuits
Electrify your classroom as you lead pupils through a series of steps to demonstrate basic principles of electricity and magnetism. They design a simple circuit and test this for static electricity and current electricity. Next, they...
Curated OER
Static Electricity - Grocery Store Items
Students investigate static electricity using inexpensive "grocery store" items. They view demonstrations with video segments. They graph the data they collect.
Curated OER
Static electricity: Ah, There's the rub!
Students experiment to investigate static electricity. In this static electricity instructional activity, students prepare a balloon head and draw a face on it. Students rub the nose and the balloon moves toward the student rubbing.
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Lightning!
Students use aluminum, a thumbtack, an eraser, and more to create static electricity. For this static electricity lesson plan, students use this experiment to simulate lightning.
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Static Electricity 4: Static Electricity and Lightning
Students explain concepts related to static electricity, based on a single example: lightning.
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Static Electricity 3: More About Static Electricity
Students reinforce the concept that static electricity is a phenomenon that involves positive and negative charges.
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Static Electricity 1: Introducing Atoms
Students explore webpages to research the nature of atoms, including electrons, protons, and neutrons. This instructional activity is the first of a four-part series on static electricity. They see that static electricity involves + and...
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Lightning
Young scholars investigate lightning. In this lightning lesson, students demonstrate how static electricity is in the air by observing how a balloon reacts to a charge.
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What is Lightning?
Students experiment with electricity to understand lightning. In this lightning activity, students show how static electricity causes lightning. Students discuss questions about their experiment and gather important facts. Students...
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Lightning in a Jar
Students create lightning with two common objects and observe the colorful "discharge" of electrons on a smaller scale. By exploring the phenomena of static electricity, students relate their knowledge to the real-life weather phenomena...
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Bolts Out of the Blue
Students research different types of lightning patterns and compare their origins to an experiment on static electricity. They research different types of lightning, and explain how different light patterns result from those charges.
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Lightning
Students study lightening and the history behind how it was used for electricity. For this electricity lesson students complete several experiments on the invention of the lightning rod.
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How is Lightning Formed
Young scholars research lightning paying particular attention to how it is formed, where it is most likely to occur, and how most people struck by lightning survive.
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Getting A Charge Out of the Sky
Students investigate electricity from the sky. In this electricity lesson, students participate in an experiment to simulate the electric charges from the sky. Students discuss results.
Curated OER
Lightning
Students uncover the science behind lightning and thunder.Theyexamine electrical attraction between like and unlike charges, and the force that creates lightning, is first explained using static electricity.
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Stuck On You
Fifth graders, after completing a K-W-L-H Chart on electricity, discuss and illustrate the four ways lightening can move.
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Electricity - How it Works and How We Measure and Pay For It
Students investigate energy consumption by researching wattage. In this electricity lesson, students discuss how electricity works and gets transferred to our electronic devices through generators and circuits. Students examine their...
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Focusing Event to Electricity
Students explain how electrical charges behave. In this electricity activity, students determine how far away lightning is when it strikes. They research how fabric softener reduces static electricity and share their findings in class.
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Stormy Weather
Middle schoolers conduct various experiments to explore the concepts that static electricity is the cause of lightning.
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Thunderstorms
Fourth graders investigate the attraction between two different charges to explain the concept of lightning in a thunderstorm.
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Storms and Extreme Weather
Students explore hurricanes and tornadoes by conducting an experiment. For this weather pattern lesson, students define many extreme weather vocabulary terms and discuss the relationship with static electricity. Students utilize plastic...
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Lightning It's Shocking, It's Frightening, It's Lightning!
Third graders decide what they want to explore lightning, how to go about finding the answers, and deciding what skills they need to further study some of their questions.