Static electricity- 1st class

First, we discussed electricity: what is it, where does it come from and what is it used for.
I asked the students trigger questions to figure out what they knew about static electricity. We discussed all the times they had gotten an 'electric shock'. Then we watched a video which helped us understand more about static electricity and how it works.

I demonstrated how static electricity works using a balloon that we rub on our hair, back and forth. (static electricity occurs when an electric charge builds up on an object. This can happen by rubbing certain things together). I showed the students how the static electricity on the balloon made my hair stand up.

The students then guessed which materials would move towards the balloon due to static electricity.

Each student then got a balloon and the materials- pieces of paper, a can, an elastic band, a paper clip, rice krispies and a pen. We rubbed the balloon back and forth on our hair to create static electricity. We then checked if each of the materials would move towards the balloon.

We discovered from our experiment that the pieces of paper,the rice krispies and the pen all moved towards the balloon.