09 Mar Duck River Electric supports STEM learning with electric experiments program
Last week, Duck River Electric Membership Corporation (DREMC) launched its newest youth education program, Experiments with Electricity, at Decherd Elementary School’s STEM Club after-school meeting.
The students in the club, grades 3 through 5, learned how electricity is generated from our natural resources and how it travels to their homes. Through hands-on experiments, they learned how to build a series circuit, compared the difference between series and parallel circuits, experimented with insulators and conductors and learned how a light switch works.
DREMC’s provides each student with an electric experiments workbook and furnishes the supplies needed for the hands-on experiments: copper wire, batteries, light sockets, bulbs and more.
“The Experiments with Electricity program helps students have fun while learning the basics of electricity,” says DREMC’s Communications and Community Relations Coordinator Gina Warren, “and the hands-on experiments help them see for themselves how electricity works.”
Not only did students gain knowledge about electricity from the experiments program, but they learned a few valuable safety lessons, too, while testing insulator and conductor materials. “Students learn which materials and objects are electric conductors and how they themselves are also conductors,” Warren adds. “They learn which materials are good insulators and understand that electronics and appliance cords are covered with thick, protective plastic coatings to protect us.”
“STEM projects and education are growing needs in our schools to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning,” says Warren. “DREMC is helping fill that need with our youth education programs that teach these elements from our perspective.”
In the photos: STEM Club students at Decherd Elementary successfully create electric circuits and learn the difference between insulators and conductors.