What Makes Fluorescent Lights Buzz? - A Video Lesson

Earlier this year Minute Physics released a video explanation of how light bulbs work. I shared that video along with some other resources for teaching about electricity in this post. Brain Stuff recently released a video that offers a good explanation of why we hear a buzzing sound coming from fluorescent lights found in many schools and office buildings. The video is embedded below.


Applications for Education
Why Do Fluorescent Lights Make That Buzzing Noise? could be useful in helping connect a lesson on electricity to an experience that most of your students share, hearing that buzzing sound in your classroom. Have your students create a list of possible causes of the buzzing sound before they watch the video to see if their hypotheses are correct.

How Light Bulbs Work and Activities for Learning About Electricity

Minute Physics recently released a short video that features an explanation of how modern light bulbs work and how light bulb design has changed over the last 100+ years.The video also includes explanations of the different types of modern light bulbs and their applications. The video is embedded below.


Applications for Education
You could use the video as part of a lesson on electricity. In that same lesson you might want to have students learn about how electricity is produced and delivered to their homes. Hydro to Home is an interactive story of hydro-electric power from raindrops to homes. The story walks visitors through each step of the process of generating hydro-electric power and delivering to consumers' homes. The story is narrated and along the way there are interactive images that visitors can click on to learn even more information about hydro-electric power.

After students understand how electricity can be generated and delivered to their homes, introduce them to The Blobz Guide to Electric Circuits. The Blobz Guide to Electric Circuits is a neat series of interactive animations designed to help students of elementary and middle school age learn how electric circuits work. There are five sections to the series. Each sections builds upon the lessons of the previous section. The series starts with the basics of what makes a circuit complete and concludes with diagramming and building circuits. Each section in the series has a few short lessons and is followed by an animated interactive activity to which students can apply what they have just learned.