Playing with electricity

I don't think I know a science teacher who can resist setting up circuits. We'd been talking about the invention of the light bulb, so it seemed appropriate to let the children have a go at making a circuit. After a trial with aluminium foil (which I've been told does work), we went to plan B and bought some copper wire (coated of course). Each group of children had one battery two wires, a light bulb, and some insulating tape. Eventually all the groups managed to get their light bulb lit up.

As a finale, we decided to see what happened when we connected 5 batteries in series. As we added each battery, we checked to see it was still working.

Eventually we managed to get the 5 batteries in series without burning any fingers or burning out the light bulb. Here's the proof!