ESSAY 2

You have learned about electricity by reading two articles, “Energy Story” and “Conducting Solutions,” and viewing a video clip titled “Hands-on Science with Squishy Circuits.”

In an essay, compare the purposes of the three sources. Then analyze how each source uses explanations, demonstrations, or descriptions of experiments to help accomplish its purpose. Be sure to discuss important differences and similarities between the information gained from the video and the information provided in the articles. Support your response with evidence from each source.

EXAMPLE 1:

The purposes of the three sources all have to do with electricity. The purpose of Energy Story was to teach people about electricity, and how electricity affects our life everyday. The purpose of Hands-on Science with Squishy Circuits is to tell people that younger children can learn about electricity and be safe at the same time. The purpose of Conducting Solutions is to teach about the science of electricity, and also how to fix problems that people might have with electricity. (Informational) In Energy Story the author stated that we use electricity every day. The author also wrote about how electricity works like how atoms have specific numbers of electrons. In Hands-on Science with Squishy Circuits the speaker says that her own daughter was very happy when she could make a LED light up in the play-dough. In conducting solutions the author wrote about what conducts, and what doesn't conduct electricity. The information in the first article was a good setup for the video, and the last article explained the video very well. This was because the first article stated that it was the basics of electricity. The last article helped me understand how the salty dough was a conductor of electricity. The salt helps because it is made up of ions.

EXAMPLE 2:

The first article, Energy Story, has a purpose of teaching you how electricity works. The video source, squishy circuits, is presenting an experiment and teaching you how to do it. Conducting solutions has a purpose to teach you about solutions that can conduct electricity. The purposes of all these articles are different, but are the same. All of these articles want to help people learn about how electricity moves. The first article accomplishes its goal by giving you a number of facts and explaining more about them. For example, the second article says, “An atom is a single part that makes up an element. There are 118 different know elements. “The second article achieves its purpose by showing you the experiment, giving you facts about the experiment, and telling you exactly what you need and what you need to do for the experiment. The video even told you a website to go to called Squish Circuits. The third article achieves its goal by giving you a solution and explaining how and why it will conduct the amount of electricity it does. An example that is, "Sugar is such a substance. When sugar dissolves in water, the solution does not conduct electricity..."

EXAMPLE 3:

All of the sources teach me something about electricity that I have never learned before. In Energy Story, I learned how electricity is formed. In Hands-on Science with Squishy Circuits, I learned that we could use everyday objects to teach us about electricity. I also learned that electricity passes through salt much easier than sugar. In Conducting Solutions, I learned about how electricity conducts and doesn’t conduct through liquid.

In Energy Story, they used explanations and descriptions to teach me. He made a comparison to electricity and a fire fighter's bucket brigades. The water is passed from person to person during that, which is similar to electricity, because the charge is passed from atom to atom.

In the video, they used demonstrations and explanations to teach me about electricity. First, they explained how salty dough conducts much better than sugary dough, because salt is a conductor and sugar is an insulator. Then they used a demonstration of the sugary and salty dough to make circuits to power things on.

In Conducting Solutions, they used explanations and descriptions to teach me about electricity. They taught me how electricity is conducted through different liquid. Pure water doesn't conduct well, but salt water does.

I think that all of these work to teach me about electricity. All of the ways they describe atoms and conductors and insulators teach me well.

EXAMPLE 4:

The purpose of the three stories is to inform us about how much we use electricity and what it all does for us. Each source gives demonstrations about how the electricity travels through conductors and how it's really easy to test experiments with it. All three stories also give great descriptions of what to do if you want to test the experiment out. One of the differences in all three would be the way they tested their experiments. Like in the first story, they say "this chain is similar to the fire fighter's bucket bridges in olden times." In the video, they use play-dough and we see how that gets conducted. In the last story, it talks about how liquid solutions can vary from water "pure water contains very little ions," and different substances. One of the obvious similarities would be that they are all showing just how many ways electricity can be conducted.

EXAMPLE 5:

In the three passages they all accomplish its purpose. In the passages, they all talk about electricity. All have something that you can see or do/touch. In all three they talk about atoms in electricity or how they create electricity.

In the Energy Story, it’s talking about Electricity in your homes or places. For experiments on this you can look for areas where they will have electricity. The purpose is to tell readers about electricity and how it was created.

In the Hands-on Science with Squishy Circuits, it was saying how simple it is to make electricity and the different ways it can travel through things. In the video, it showed how you can use clay/play doe and you could turn on little lights. But it also said the different ways it could work, like you could use salt doe, but not sugar and you can’t put salt with salt. You had to put sugar between them for it to work.

In the Conducting Solutions, it was talking about different substances charge or flow of electricity. It also talked about ions affecting the electricity pull. There were ways atoms could charge the electricity. In the three passages they all accomplish its purpose. In the passages, they all talk about conducting electricity. All have something that you can see or do/touch. In all three they talk about atoms in electricity or how they create electricity.