For STEM these last couple of weeks, we’ve been focusing on creating a house plan using our knowledge in voltages, currents, and circuits in science. Whilst in maths, we’ve been focusing on the area of our chosen house plan. We had three options for our house plan, and we also had three options for the amount of bulbs we wanted. I chose option 3 and picked 12 light-bulbs to add to my house plan.
Here are our three options (Achieved, merit, excellence, left to right).
Here on the right is my house plan, it includes all of the usual rooms you would have in a house. When you enter the house from the top, you are greeted with the living room that’s fully furnished with a couch, a table and chairs, TV stand, carpet, and a house plant in the corner. In the left of that is one of the bedrooms, and on the right is the unfurnished entertainment room, if you move down from the living room is the dining room. On the right of the dining room is the kitchen and conjoined bathroom and laundry room, on the left of it is the library/office area. Moving down even more, there is our master bedroom and storage at the end of the house.
I spread out the twelve light bulbs evenly throughout the house, making sure that it would be realistic. Overall, there are 9 rooms in the house.
Calculations
I did all sorts of calculations for this house plan, it ranges from the total area of the house, the voltage for the light-bulbs, and lastly the current. You can also see that on the left of my calculations, you are able to see the pathways of the wires and where light bulbs are present.
Here is my working out (Area, voltage, current, top to bottom) :
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Discussion: What do the terms voltage, current, resistance mean? How did you do the calculations? What do your calculations tell you about circuits and houses? Do the calculations make sense?
Voltage: Voltage is the name for the electric force that causes electrons to flow.
Current: Current is a flow of electrical charge carriers, usually electrons or electron-deficient atoms.
Resistance: Resistance is the opposition that a substance offers to the flow of electric current.
How did I do my calculations?
Area – Multiplying the height and the width of a certain shape gives you the area.
Voltage – Every light bulb has a total of 200 volts. If you divide that 200 by how many light bulbs you have per wire/pathway (200V divided by 3LB equals 6.66 volts for each) and that’s how much voltage there is in your light bulb.
Current- We once again bring back the 200 voltage. Each light bulb has a total of 25 Ω, multiply that with how much light bulbs you have in each wire (eg. 200V divided by 75Ω, equals 2.66A), that’s how much amps there are. What amps are basically the answer for finding out the current.
I quite enjoyed doing this project even though we didn’t have a lot of time for it, I really hope that we can do it again next time. Something I would like to change would be the format of my house, it seems too complicated. Lastly, thank you so much for reading my blog about this STEM project :))