EVERYDAY SCIENCE - ELECTRICITY

Question 2

Churros was starting to decorate a Christmas tree in preparation for Christmas. Diagram A shows the string lights he used.

Diagram B shows the details of the Christmas light bulb. The bulb is special as it has a shunt wire that is covered with a material that is an electrical insulator.

If the bulb fuses, the high temperature will cause the electrical insulator to melt. The shunt wire will then touch the metal supports directly.

electricity oeq2a.jpg
electricity oeq2.jpg
Answer 1

Fill in the blanks with the keywords provided below.
[gap] • [closed] • [electric current] • [parallel] • [series] • [shunt wire] • [not]

a) Fill in the blanks regarding the string lights.

Answer:

The bulbs in the string lights are arranged in . If one bulb is removed, the rest of the bulbs will be lit.


b) Churros has 40 bulbs in his string lights. He connected the string lights to a power supply that gives 120 V. What is the voltage across each bulb?

Answer:

The voltage across each bulb of the string lights is V.


c) Ace observed that even though one of the bulbs fused, the rest of the bulbs remain lit. He took a closer look at the fused bulb as shown in diagram B above. With reference to the diagram, explain how the shunt wire in the fused bulb allows the other bulbs to remain lit.

Answer:

When the bulb fuses, the metal filament breaks and there is a in the filament.
Since the shunt wire is arranged in to the filament, is still able to flow through the to the other bulbs.
The circuit remains .




DO YOU KNOW plain.png

“Incandescent bulbs convert much of the electrical energy supplied into unwanted heat energy. Many people are switching from incandescent to LED (light emitting diode) bulbs as LED bulbs are more energy efficient. The cost of electricity to light up a Christmas tree using LED bulbs is approximately 40 times cheaper!”


Watch this video to understand the difference between how incandescent and LED bulbs work.