Electrical power and work with Cobra SMARTsense

Principle

The electrical power required to operate electrical components results from the electric current flowing at an applied voltage. In this experiment, the brightness of incandescent lamps is used as a measure of electrical power. Students can easily see, for example, that two identical lamps together have twice the power if they shine with the same brightness.

Benefits

• Particularly comprehensible and didactically prepared description of the experiment (reference to everyday life, etc.) incl. protocol questions.
• Future-oriented teaching: Integration into digital science lessons with tablets or smartphones.
• Increased motivation among students through use of the intuitive measureAPP.
• Increased media literacy.
• No additional cable connections between the modules necessary – clearer and faster set-up.
• contact reliability due to puzzle-like interlocking building blocks
• Hard gold-plated, corrosion-resistant contacts
• Double learning success: electrical circuit diagram visible on the upper side and real components on the lower side

Tasks

Using the parallel and series connection of incandescent lamps, investigate the dependence of electrical power on current and voltage.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to deduce the relationship between power and amperage and voltage from the experiment:

P ∼ U for I = constant and P ∼ I for U = constant.