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Electrical circuits are used all the time in the world around us.
Let's look at an electric fan. They use electricity to create a breeze and make you feel cooler.
This is a fan that needs to be plugged into the mains, but there are much smaller hand-held fans that are run off batteries.
When you turn on a fan, you are completing the electrical pathway for electricity to flow through wires to reach the motor.
The motor then starts spinning and it has blades attached.
The blades spin around and they create a breeze that cools you down and makes you feel comfortable.
In science, we use electrical diagrams to illustrate what circuits look like.
The components (parts) in the circuit below are: the wires to connect everything; the battery which provides the power; the switch to turn it on or off; the motor for movement and a bulb for light of course!
You can see here that the switch is closed which means it is turned on. You can see that when the switch is closed, the circuit is complete so the electricity can flow around the whole circuit without interruption. If it was open, there would be a break in the circuit stopping the electricity from flowing. This would be us turning something off.
In this activity, we will explore all about the circuit of a fan.
