Text Set #2: Electricity

Electricity and Magnetism by Elisha Gray
Grade level: 9-12
In this book, Elisha Gray introduces the historical contexts of electricity and magnetism. Without using pages of equations, Gray develops the important concepts of electricity. There is also a chapter on harnessing water power in Niagara Falls. I think reading an excerpt from this text would be useful when teaching electricity, or using it as a resource for projects.

NV Energy: How to read your meter
https://www.nvenergy.com/home/customercare/readyourmeter.cfm
Grade level: 6-12
This is a website which explains some of the mystery revolving your electrical meter. This year in my class, I used one of my electrical bills from KUB. It's a good example for real world application. Most electrical companies use 'weird' units (such as kWhr) and in class we can find out what that is in SI units.

PHYSICS: An USBOURNE Introduction
ISBN: 0-86020-711-0
Grade level: 5-8
This book is a child-friendly approach to traditional physics. It includes nearly all areas of physics on a couple of pages per topic. It's written in cartoon-y almost comic book like style. It has explanations of natural phenomena and explains real world applications. It also includes several student friendly experiments. Even though it is targeted to younger students I have found some great demonstration ideas here. It is also a good resource for students to use for ideas if they are doing a project. The sections for electricity and magnetism are especially good because it shows the concepts through observable phenomena, not form a theoretical perspective.

101 Classroom Demonstrations
Grade level: 9-12
This is a book of demonstrations for physics. It not only explains how to preform the demonstrations but also the concepts behind them. Useful for students to read along with a topic to help reinforce the physical consequences of a topic. Any chance for students to relate academic material to real life is beneficial.

Hyper Physics: Electricity and Magnetism
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html
Grade level: 11-12
This website is a good reference for the electricity and magnetism unit. It is organized as a concept map by topic. There are some 'physics calculators' for particular topics. This is where a student can type in a set of values and it solves for the missing quantity. It provides reference formulas for each topic and explains the relationships between variables in words. The other reason I picked this is because related topics link to each other, so there are multiple avenues to get to a certain topic or page. This can really help students reinforce the relationship between topics in the material. (Especially in physics, there are lots of connections.)

PHYSICS4KIDS: Electricity
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/elec_intro.html
Grade level: 5-8
This website has an excellent set of pages for electricity. It includes diagrams (which really convey complex phenomena) in an age-appropriate manner. Even without having chemistry, it explains the different between conductors and insulators. It even shows the relationship between force and distance graphically, showing an exponential (which they may not realize) without using in equations!

MIT: The wonders of electricity
http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-wonders-of-electricity-and-magnetism-9964/
Grade level: 9-12
This website's main focus is a video demonstration lecture at a museum. The video is appropriate for all ages but the text on the page is more at a high school level. The text on the page explains some of the demonstration outcomes without explanation (which is in the video.) A good activity I could do with this resource is having students read the text, and speculate on how the demonstrations might be preformed and why, and then watch the accompanying video. Then, students could compare their speculations to how the preforming completed the demos.

Physics 1501: Electricity and Magnetism
http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node83.html
Grade level: 10-12
This is a course website that has been done very well. It includes notes for each topic that read like a condensed textbook. (I know that sounds so awesome, haha) but it really is. This is a great resource for students who forgot their textbook one day, or would just like a supplementary text. The thing I like about how this website portrays this unit is that it teaches Electricity and Magnetism separately, and then shows how deep their connection really is. Also includes really good diagrams. Does not include very much Electrostatics, unfortunately.

Galaxy.net: Electricity
http://www.galaxy.net/~k12/electric/
Grade level: 9-12
This is a reference of demonstrations for electricity. I really like projects in physics that students get to chose their own experiment. This is a good resource for students to find demonstrations and experiments to do. It also includes teacher notes so students can see the 'behind the scenes' emphasis on each aspect of the experiments.

Berkley: Physics Applets
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/physics/appletindex.html
Grade level: 10-12
This is a webpage of physics applets. It has includes alot of PhET simulations for topics in physics. It has the longest list for electricity and magnetism and even includes a simulation for superconductivity (which is an advance topic.) Students can use this webpage as a reference if they ever want to view a simulation for a concept.

CalTech: Physics Applets
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~phys1/java.html
Grade level: 10-12
This is another webpage of physics applets. Gives students more options for their choice of applets. Could use in a project where students have to find their own simulations/ applets for a topic to share with the class. A project like this would also help me find the most effective applets to use with my students.