Resources: Materials for the Mission Assignment, such as the PhET simulation within the presentation.
Handout: Step by step instructions for what students need to do for the Mission Assignment task and the information they need to record.
Revise electricity content from KS2 and the previous unit, such as how electric charges are attracted and repelled by each other, and how this can be used to create simple circuits. Recap on static electricity and how it can be produced by rubbing certain materials together.
Ask the students: When an object is electrically charged, like a balloon, what do you feel when you are close to it, but not touching it? The students should discuss their ideas with their talk partner.
Go through the presentation slides, explaining electric fields and the concept of charge. Discuss how charge is measured in coulombs and then move on to exploring field lines. Pause the slides wherever relevant to allow the students to explore their learning.
Career Film: Take a tour around Rolls Royce SMR's Heritage Museum in Derby to find out about Chloe Magee's job. Chloe works as an Indirect Buyer for Rolls Royce SMR.
Expert Film: This is Sayalee Sawant. Sayalee works as a Systems Integration Engineer for Rolls Royce SMR. Listen to Sayalee as she describes an electric field.
The students will be using the online PhET simulator to complete an electric field experiment. This can be found within the presentation.
Support Task: Ask the students to complete the Mission Assignment in small groups, rather than individually.
Challenge Task: Design and conduct an experiment to investigate the properties of electric fields using simple materials such as a battery, wire and a piece of paper with iron filings.
Divide the class into small groups and give each group a different scenario involving electric fields. Ask them to work together to come up with an explanation of what's happening in the scenario based on what they learned in the lesson. Then, ask each group to share their scenario and explanation with the rest of the class.
An electric field is a 3-dimensional region where any charged object experiences a force. All charged objects by their very nature have their own electric field. For example, a proton has an electric field surrounding it. If an electron were to enter into the proton's electric field, the electron would experience an attractive force.
In theory, the range of an electric field is infinite. However, the further away from the source of the electric field an object is, the weaker the force it experiences. After a certain point, the electric effect becomes so small it is negligible.