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Words Along Wires
This topic from Siemens designed for primary aged pupils, uses the context of long distance communications to get them thinking about how scientific ideas are used to develop solutions to challenges and how technology is about comparing and evaluating different solutions.
- Ways of communicating – sound, light, telephone, semaphore - Looks at how information can be communicated in various ways and considers the advantages and shortcomings of each method. Children work together to invent a way of sending information using: a beam of light, some form of signs and an electrical circuit which reaches from one place to the other.
- Planning a link – choosing a route - Pupils work as communications engineers planning and justifying a route for a submarine cable, showing how hazards were avoided whilst minimising the amount of cable used. Linking to aspects of the design and technology, and geography curriculum, it provides an opportunity to develop thinking and reasoning skills whilst working collaboratively.
- Technologies in competition - Children learn about how engineers sometimes develop different solutions to a problem. They build models of two systems: the Morse transmitter by build a simple circuit with either a buzzer or a bulb and the Siemens transmitter and receiver. They then work in small groups sending messages via Morse code, transmitting using light or sound and decoding at the other end. The Siemens system is a representation of how it would work so allowing the systems to be compared.
The resource includes a presentation, teacher notes and activity sheets.
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Downloads
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Semaphore (activity sheet 1) 915.42 KB
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Flashing Lights (activity sheet 2) 958.43 KB
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Using a circuit (activity sheet 3) 395.43 KB
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Words Along Wires (scheme of work) 710.19 KB
Show downloads
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Semaphore (activity sheet 1) 915.42 KB -
Flashing Lights (activity sheet 2) 958.43 KB
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Using a circuit (activity sheet 3) 395.43 KB
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Words Along Wires (scheme of work) 710.19 KB
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Download all files as a .zip6.99 MB
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