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The Arizona STEM Acceleration Project

Introduction to Ohm’s Law

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Introduction to Ohm’s Law

An 8th to 11th grade STEM lesson

Ramon Cid

Date 6/17/2024

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Notes for teachers

This lesson is a PhET simulation. Click on the link Circuit Construction Kit: DC.

Materials- technology to access the PhET simulation.

Copy of the student lab for each student: Phet Simulation: Student Lab and Teacher Guide

Duration:

1 Period of 48 minutes

In this lesson, students will understand the relationship between voltage, resistance, and current in an electric circuit and graph the relationship between voltage, and current.

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Standards

Physics

PI.8.1

Develop graphical, mathematical, and pictorial representations that describe the relationship between length, cross-sectional area, and resistivity of an ohmic device and apply those representations to qualitatively and quantitatively describe how changing the composition, size, or shape of the device affect the resistance.

PI.8.4

Describe the slope of the graphical representation of current vs. voltage or voltage vs. current in terms of the resistance of the device.

8th Grade Mathematics

8.F.B.4

Given a description of a situation, generate a function to model a linear relationship between two quantities. Determine the rate of change and initial value of the function from a description of a relationship or from two (x, y) values, including reading these from a table or a graph. Track how the values of the two quantities change together. Interpret the rate of change and initial value of a linear function in terms of the situation it models, its graph, or its table of values.

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Objectives:

Understand the relationship between voltage, resistance, and current in an electric circuit.

Graph the relationship between voltage, and current.

Use simulation programs to model relationships

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Agenda

Warm-Up

Exploration

Activity Lab

Post-Lab

Ph ET Simulation: Student Lab and Teacher Guide

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Ohm’s Law Overview

Ohm’s Law states

“The current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points and inversely proportional to the resistance between them.”

Essential Questions:

How does Ohm’s Law explain the relationship between voltage, current and resistance in an electrical circuit?

What are the real-world implications of Ohm’s Law in everyday electrical devices and systems?

What happens to the current in a circuit if the voltage is increased while the resistance remains constant

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Hands-On Activity

Warm-up (3 minutes): students will review and remember the definitions of current, voltage and resistance, previous knowledge to Ohm’s Law is required
Exploration (10 minutes): students will play with the Simulation, think-pair-share is highly recommended to identify what students identify.
Activity Lab (25 minutes): Students follow instructions from the LAB and answer the questions given in the paper
Post-Lab (10 minutes): Share the results with the class and final feedback from teacher.

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Assessment

Have students answer the Post-Lab question on their recording sheet:

What can you conclude about the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance?

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Differentiation

Language can be changed in PhET sim to help ESL students.
Guided instructions for student success.
Put students into purposefully chosen groups in order for students to have a strong reader to read aloud the questions.
Put the recording sheet digitally so students can use text to speech.

Remediation

Extension/Enrichment

Encourage open-ended exploration on the topic.
Analytical questions- allow students to have a space to write these questions for the class.