Each section in this Hands-On / Virtual workshop ends with a discussion page. The questions we ask here serve two important purposes. First, they help your group reflect on the concepts that you have studied in this section, summarize what you have learned, and encourage you to connect those concepts to other things you experience in the world. Secondly, they are the means by which the remote instructors of the class get immediate feedback on how much the group is thinking and learning. They are the immediate section assessment.
You are asked as a group to discuss at least 2 of the following questions. We encourage you to discuss them all, but we ask for an email commentary to only two of them. Before you start please see this page for some guidance on what types of discussion we are looking for. After you email your discussion, you can expect (within a day or two) an email from us commenting on what you wrote. Sometimes this commentary will ask for further discussion; sometimes it will give examples of what other groups had to say. You should always read these commentaries carefully, and reply to the follow-up questions if there are any. These comments are intended to guide you to a better understanding of the subject matter.
Here are some things to do to finish this section.
When the capacitor is charged to 3 V, it contains about 1 Joule (equivalent to lifting an egg 1 m). You can use your observations to determine the power rating for a flashlight light bulb. Power (in watts) is the amount of energy divided by the time spent releasing it. So divide 1 Joule by how long the capacitor can keep the light bulb glowing, to find the power. Then use the relationship between current, voltage, and power to estimate how much current it takes to light the light bulb.
How many charged capacitors would we need to replace one flashlight battery?This is the end of this section. (Check this
box ) The next section is about resistance
Here are some other pages you might like to look at sometime: