PHYS.6.E

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The student is expected to calculate current through, potential difference across, resistance of, and power used by electric circuit elements connected in both series and parallel circuit using Ohm's law.
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Knowledge and Skills Statement

Science concepts. The student knows the nature of forces in the physical world.

It is important that students are able to not only solve equations related to circuits, but also describe the relationships represented by those equations. Images like the one below represent the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance and may help students understand how changing one variable can impact the others.
 

Image showing the relationship between volts, ohms, and amps
Image 1 url: File:Volts ohms amps.png - Wikimedia Commons

The image below may be helpful in describing all the different ways that power, voltage, current, and resistance can be calculated if the other variables are known.
 

Image showing the various calculations involving power, current, voltage, and resistance
Image 2 url: File:Power-Voltage-Current-and-Resistance-Calculator-P-I-V-R-Calculator-Ohms-Law-Calcultor-768x758.webp - Wikimedia Commons

the flow of charge, commonly the flow of electrons, measured in Amperes (A); represented with an I in an equation

a push or pull between two objects

a circuit with two or more branches where current divides and flows along separate paths before it combines again

the difference in the amount of electrical energy per unit charge that charge carriers have between two points in a circuit; also called voltage, measured in volts (V)

the rate at which energy is transferred

a measure of the opposition to current flow in an electrical circuit, measured in Ohms (Ω)

a circuit with a single path along which the whole current flows through each component

Research

Ivanjek, Lana, Louisa Morris, Thomas Schubatzky, Martin Hopf, Jan-Philipp Burde, Claudia Haagen-Schützenhöfer, Liza Dopatka, Verena Spatz, and Thomas Wilhelm. "Development of a Two-tier Instrument on Simple Electric Circuits." Physical Review Physics Education Research 17, no. 2 (2021): 020123. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020123

Summary:  Six physics education research groups from Germany and Austria started a large study to evaluate and improve middle-school students’ conceptual understanding of simple electric circuits. Analysis of the data suggests that the concept of voltage is most difficult for students while distinguishing between open and closed circuits is the easiest.

Research

Yerushalmi, Edit, Menashe Puterkovsky, and Esther Bagno. "Knowledge Integration While Interacting with an Online Troubleshooting Activity." Journal of Science Education and Technology 22, no. 4 (2013): 463-474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-012-9406-8

Summary:  A troubleshooting activity was carried out by an e-tutor in two steps. First, students diagnosed a mistaken statement and then compared their diagnosis to a teacher’s diagnosis provided by the e-tutor. The mistaken statement involved a widespread tendency to over-generalize Ohm’s law. We studied the discourse between pairs of students working with the e-tutor to examine whether and how the activity attained its objective of engaging students in knowledge integration processes; namely to elicit students’ ideas, add scientifically acceptable or non-acceptable ideas and support them in developing criteria to sort out their ideas.