Love innovations in physics teaching?

Get 12 months free access to Electricity Explained in return for feedback

Will your students understand circuits better with our simulations?

Students find ideas like voltage, current, and power really hard to visualise. Innovative teachers care about the impact on the student learning experience just as much as they care about the impact on their current way of teaching.

Have a play around with the simulation

Eighteen lessons covering the whole KS3/4 current electricity syllabus

Series and parallel circuit simulations plus electricity animations

Innovative teachers like to get the physics right for its own sake.

Electricity Explained uses only 11-16 concepts in a way that enriches the syllabus, rather than expanding it.

Flex to your own style in front of a class, or as self-paced lessons

Simulations and animations

For whole-class teaching

3-minute videos

For the classroom or for home learning

Online quizzes

Based on the visuals you’ve used to teach

Familiar topics founded on a deep understanding of circuits

It’s easy to deliver the syllabus you already use, but there’s a lot under the hood to help teachers develop their own understanding of circuits.

Electricity Explained layers

Why I need your help

I’ve thought very hard about teaching and learning electricity for over twenty years, and I’m still developing my ideas.

Furry Elephant - Electricity Explained’s predecessor - was used by hundreds of schools all over the world, and this new version is tighter and easier to use in the classroom, but sacrifices none of the depth that FE fans loved.

I’ve run CPD for the IoP and ASE, and was a subject matter expert reviewer for the OUP. But I’m not a classroom teacher any more, and so I need feedback from the chalk face about what works and what doesn’t.

Julian Hamm - founder of Electricity Explained

This is me - Julian Hamm - at home in Devon.

Okay, that sounds interesting - tell me more

FAQ

Innovative teachers may enjoy these unique insights

Why the rope loop is not great at predicting circuit behaviour

It’s claimed that the rope model has predictive powers - the problem is that in almost every case it predicts the exact opposite of how real circuits behave…more

Electrical ‘resistance’ is only a metaphor

The idea of electrical resistance is a horrible concept, and causes no end of confusion, though people are rarely aware that they’ve been confused. It’s one of the main…more

Battery voltage and the invisible 4th Law of electric circuits

When we have a simple circuit and we change the resistance, most teachers will simply say that you use the I=V/R relationship to calculate the new current…more

How batteries decide their chemical reaction rates

Batteries change the rate their chemical reactions run at depending on what they’re connected to - but how do they know what rate that should be?…more

Do charges ‘really’ carry energy?

They may or may not, but it really helps explain voltage and power if you pretend they do, and make this pretence explicit…more