Getting started with electrical circuits
A collection of resources collated for the Design and Technology GCSE, to support the teaching of foundation principles for electrical circuits. For example, voltage, resistance, current, parallel and series circuits, the function of resistors and their colour coding.
Understanding electronic principles
These electronics resources from Kitronik help students to understand simple electronic components, identify circuit symbols, calculate resistance values, calculate capacitor values, understand how a potential divider works, understand components such as thermistors, light dependent resistors, logic gates, integrated circuits.
Ohm's Law
This simulation demonstrates how Ohm's law relates to a simple circuit. The voltage and resistance can be adjusted to see how this affects the current. The sizes of the symbols in the equation change to match the circuit diagram.
Episode 101: Introduction to Circuits
These activities look at electrical circuits:
- how current flows in series and parallel circuits
- how the flow of current is affected by resistors
- setting up circuits and drawing circuit diagrams
- an introduction and demonstration on the use of multimeters.
Circuit Construction Kit: DC
This online simulator allows students to quickly build circuits, exploring resistance, parallel and series circuits, switches and batteries.
Making Circuits
These questions (presentations and worksheets) help develop understanding of the key concept of making circuits. Early questions test students understanding of circuit construction, electricity flow, different components. Later questions are more specific to the science curriculum, testing topics such as magnetism.
Beginners guide to Resistors
This video is a beginners guide to using resistors in electronics. It provides an overview of carbon film resistors (including reading resistor codes), LDR's, thermistors and variable resistors.
Ohm's Law
This video is a basic introduction to circuits, including voltage, current, resistance and the relationship between them with Ohm's Law.
Introduction to Light Emitting Diodes or LEDs
A short video explaining how to use 'Light Emitting Diodes' in electronic circuits.