Christmas Lights - Circuits

Since we've started learning about circuits, one of the first examples I thought of was with those old Christmas light strands. Although most of the newer ones are wired so that this doesn't happen, my family still uses one of the older kind to run up the middle of our tree. I always remember it as being a pain to set up because having just one of the bulbs broken causes the entire strand to not light up!

Of course, I am very familiar with this aggravating situation as I am always the one drafted to check the lights. I have to check each bulb to see if that is the one that needs to be replaced. Thankfully, we finally bought a newer strand this year. While before, the old strand wouldn't even light up if one bulb was broken this new strand still lights up and somehow bypasses the broken bulb. This makes it much easier to find and replace.

The reason the older strand was so difficult, was because it was wired like a simple circuit in which one broken filament breaks the entire circuit. As a result, the whole strand won't light up because the electrons won't flow through an incomplete circuit with the small voltage difference from the wall outlet.

Anyway, although this entry may be kind of out of season, I thought I'd write about our old Christmas lights since they were the first thing to pop into my head when I was thinking about current electricity.

Unfortunately, our Christmas lights and decorations are away in storage so I had to draw a strand of lights.