Battery: a container consisting of one or more cells, in which chemical energy is converted into electricity and used as a source of power.

The car battery helps start the engine!

Complete Circuit: Also called electric circuit. the complete path of an electric current, including the generating apparatus, intervening resistors, or capacitors.

The current completes a complete circuit when it flows from the battery to the lightbulb and back to the battery.

Conductors of electricity: An electrical conductor is a substance in which electrical charge carriers, usually electrons, move easily from atom to atom with the application of voltage. Conductivity, in general, is the capacity to transmit something, such as electricity or heat. Copper, steel, gold, aluminum, and brass are also good conductors.

I wonder if iron is a good conductor of electricity?

Electrical Charge: one of the basic properties of the elementary particles of matter giving rise to all electric and magnetic forces and interactions. The two kinds of charge are given negative and positive algebraic signs: measured in coulombs.

One side of a battery has a positive electrical charge and the other side of the battery has a negative electrical charge!

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Electrical Circuit:

An electrical circuit is a path or line through which an electrical current flows. The path may be closed (joined at both ends), making it a loop. A closed circuit makes electrical current flow possible. It may also be an open circuit where the electron flow is cut short because the path is broken. An open circuit does not allow electrical current to flow. 

The reason the lights are able to turn on is because an electric current flows through an electrical circuit.

Electrical Current: An electric current is a flow of electric charge. In electric circuits this charge is often carried by moving electrons in a wire.

By cutting the wire, I disrupted the electric current

Electrical Insulators: An electrical insulator is a material whose internal electric charges do not flow freely; very little electric current will flow through it under the influence of an electric field

Some common insulator materials are glass, plastic, rubber, air, and wood.

Incomplete Circuit: is a circuit where the path has been interrupted or "opened" at some point so that current will not flow.

We had forgotten to connect one of the wires to the main power source so we had an incomplete circuit.

Insulator: a substance that does not readily allow the passage of heat or sound also a substance or device that does not readily conduct electricity.

We set up a bunch of styrofoam around the room to make it sound proof, styrofoam is a great insulator.

Parallel Circuit: A parallel circuit is a closed circuit in which the current divides into two or more paths before recombining to complete the circuit. Each load connected in a separate path receives the full circuit voltage, and the total circuit current is equal to the sum of the individual branch currents.

When one set of lights can turn off

while another set stays on, we know

they are running on a parallel circuit.