Energy Ball Exercise :)

On Friday, February 5, 2011, our physics class had the pleasure of taking part in the energy ball exercise. Mr. Chung had provided us with customized futuristic ping-pong balls that glowed and made sound through the use of electricity, and split us up into small groups of four to further experiment.

As our groups had soon realized, the ping-pong balls had small circuit boards inside, acting as the series circuit we'd learned. We'd discovered the trick of how to light the ball up: by forming a complete series circuit with our fingers. What's more, we were able to experiment different situations, such as conductivity of electricity on different materials, and under what circumstances a full circuit will not be formed. In the end, we'd come up with the conclusion that full circuits cannot be formed by two people who are not touching, or have some link or contact in between them.

To further test our class's concept, Mr.Chung assigned us the challenge of forming a human parallel circuit for two energy balls, with a switch to control one energy ball. This was done by forming an extra path for the electricity to flow through in the middle of the circuit, splitting up the two ping-pong balls.

My hypothesis for the fact that the energy ball works for some people, such as myself, and not for others, such as Mr. Chung, is that I was wearing shoes with rubber soles when I was touching the ball, hence acting as an insulator between me and the Earth/ground. Mr Chung, on the other hand, was wearing no shoes, or shoes made of material with a high conductivity, hence his electrical current through his body actually transferred to the ground, and thus his electricity level i his body was non-existant.

Simple Circuit

Parallel Circuit