Circuit Circus

Our second Urban Planning unit is called Power, it is about powering cities and electricity. We learned about different parts of a circuit and how electricity works. Our action project is to design our own efficient electrical plan and to build a circuit with five resistors and two switches. I’m most proud of actually making the circuit work, because it was difficult and there were a lot of wires, but we finally made it work.

AG Circuit (2015)

AG Diagram (2015)

The LED light represents an LED lamp which saves about 16% of the energy that a regular lamp would use. The transformer represents a solar generator which creates 300 Joules per second. The speaker represents a hand-crank radio which saves 100% of the energy that a regular radio would use because you would crank it yourself, therefore it doesn't use any energy. The resistor represents an energy efficient washer which saves 50% of the energy that a regular washing machine would use. The second resistor represents an energy efficient dryer which saves 15% of the energy that a regular dryer would use.

MV Cover (2015)

Our circuit uses a total of 6 Volts
An example of Ohm’s Law would be if the speaker had a current of 3 amps, then the resistance is 2 Ohms because:
6V = 3A * x Ohms
x Ohms = 6V / 3A
x = 2 Ohms


There are two types of currents: AC which is an alternating current, and DC which is a direct current. Our circuit is DC because batteries are always DC. 


The circuit board had many options and we came up with our design by simply choosing the options we liked the most. We used the transformer because it distributes energy, the speaker because the sound was fun to mess around with, and the LED light because we wanted to be able to see something happen. Then we added the two resistors, which take up energy, at the end because we needed to have five total. The design changed a lot over time, especially towards the end where we tried to make it work with two different switches.

During the process of building our circuit we encountered a few problems, such as figuring out where to connect the wires in a way to make it all work. But we just remained persistent, kept trying different things, and followed the instructions. Doing that allows you to solve any problem however difficult it may be, so eventually we figured out the wiring and built our amazing circuit.

Work Cited

• Ballad, Tricia, and Demand Media. "How Much Do Energy Efficient Bulbs Save?" Home Guides. Web. 10 May 2015. 
• "Clothes Dryers." Consumer Energy Center -. Web. 10 May 2015.
• "Clothes Washers." Consumer Energy Center -. Web. 10 May 2015.  
• "Goal Zero Yeti 400 300-Watt Solar Powered Generator-23000 - The Home Depot." The Home Depot. Web. 10 May 2015. 
• "Watts to Joules Calculator." Watts to Joules (J) Conversion Calculator. Web. 10 May 2015.