Students design and construct electromagnets that must pick up 10 staples. They begin with only minimal guidance, and after the basic concept is understood, are informed of the properties that affect the strength of that magnet. They conclude by designing their own electromagnets to complete the challenge of separating scrap steel from scrap aluminum for recycling, and share it with the class.

Students are challenged to design a method for separating steel from aluminum based on magnetic properties as is frequently done in recycling operations. To complicate the challenge, the magnet used to separate the steel must be able to be switched off to allow for the recollection of the steel. Students must ultimately design, test, and present an effective electromagnet.

Student teams investigate the properties of electromagnets. They create their own small electromagnet and experiment with ways to change its strength to pick up more paper clips. Students learn about ways that engineers use electromagnets in everyday applications.

Students will diagram their knowledge that magnetic fields extend outward from an electromagnet. Students will demonstrate the field strength depends on the voltage supplied and the number of coils.

In this activity, the students will complete the grand challenge and design an electromagnet to separate steel from aluminum for the recycler. In order to do this, students compare the induced magnetic field of an electric current with the magnetic field of a permanent magnet and must make the former look like the latter. They discover that looping the current produces the desired effect and find ways to further strengthen the magnetic field.

In this introduction to light energy, students learn about reflection and refraction as they learn that light travels in wave form. Through hands-on activities, they see how prisms, magnifying glasses and polarized lenses work. They also gain an understanding of the colors of the rainbow as the visible spectrum, each color corresponding to a different wavelength.

Play with a bar magnet and coils to learn about Faraday's law. Move a bar magnet near one or two coils to make a light bulb glow. View the magnetic field lines. A meter shows the direction and magnitude of the current. View the magnetic field lines or use a meter to show the direction and magnitude of the current. You can also play with electromagnets, generators and transformers!

Students investigate motors and electromagnets as they construct their own simple electric motors using batteries, magnets, paper clips and wire.

Using plastic straws, wire, batteries and iron nails, student teams build and test two versions of electromagnets one with and one without an iron nail at its core. They test each magnet's ability pick up loose staples, which reveals the importance of an iron core to the magnet's strength. Students also learn about the prevalence and importance of electromagnets in their everyday lives.

Students gain an understanding of the difference between electrical conductors and insulators, and experience recognizing a conductor by its material properties. In a hands-on activity, students build a conductivity tester to determine whether different objects are conductors or insulators. In another activity, students use their understanding of electrical properties to choose appropriate materials to design and build their own basic circuit switch.

Students learn about magnets and how they are formed. They investigate the properties of magnets and how engineers use magnets in technology. Specifically, students learn about magnetic memory storage, which is the reading and writing of data information using magnets, such as in computer hard drives, zip disks and flash drives.

Explore the interactions between a compass and bar magnet. Discover how you can use a battery and wire to make a magnet! Can you make it a stronger magnet? Can you make the magnetic field reverse?

Students learn more about magnetism, and how magnetism and electricity are related in electromagnets. They learn the fundamentals about how simple electric motors and electromagnets work. Students also learn about hybrid gasoline-electric cars and their advantages over conventional gasoline-only-powered cars.

Students teams each use a bar magnet, sheet of paper and iron shavings to reveal the field lines as they travel around a magnet. They repeat the activity with an electromagnet made by wrapping thin wire around a nail and connecting either wire end to a battery. They see that the current flowing through a wire produces a magnetic field around the wire and that this magnetic field induced by electricity is no different than that produced by a bar magnet. The experience helps to solidify the idea that electricity and magnetism are deeply interrelated.

Students are introduced to the role of electricity and magnetism as they build speakers. They also explore the properties of magnets, create electromagnets, and determine the directions of magnetic fields. They conduct a scientific experiment and show cause-effect relationships by monitoring changes in the speaker's movement as the amount or the direction of the current change.