The Action Lab – Water bridges from Volts and Amperes, Temperature from Watts Grams and Seconds
The Action Lab: How Does a Floating Water Bridge Work? at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IBiwfvXsKU
NEVER say “high voltage” or “low voltage” and vague things. When you talk about electrical things, say how many Volts, how many Amperes, how many Hertz. You can put voltage and current meters on the screen so people set the values and can begin to connect things in a quantitative and precisely predictable way.
If you are going to do science never say “significantly hotter”, say “When I raised the power (Volts time Amperes is Watts) and the mass of the water bridge was so many grams, then the temperature went up at ___ degrees Celsius per second.
You do not need a lot of equipment, and you might start with too complicated ways, but if you learn what is essential and always give the right calculated results in the right units – then you are teaching science and engineering, not just playing with phenomena. I have been watching you for years now. You are growing, but if you limit yourself to describing things with only words and hand-waving you will never get the full benefit of human knowledge.
You are allowed to replace videos that are older. You could make an archive folder and change the name, then put in new better and more precise videos. You could have ten videos on water bridges, — IF you are careful and organized. A small computer than can measure Volts and Amperes and multiply them to get Watts can be put into the video as an window. The people can see the experiment, and see the values. You can record the values and plot them. You can record the values and share them online so people can do the calculations and see the numbers with the right units themselves.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
