Meet the Irish SonS 2017 team – Máire Duffy

2nd February 2017

Homemade Electroscopes

MAire-duffy (2)

Máire Duffy is a teacher at Clonkeen College

Máire’s project involves two very simple homemade electroscopes that students can make themselves. Static electricity experiments can be lots of fun but often due to budget constraints in a school teachers may have to demonstrate a lot of their experiments. Younger students can very easily make an aluminum pie pan electroscope and then test different materials for their ability to build up static charge. The second electroscope is much more sensitive and comprises of a very simple circuit that can be made in a single class. It will encourage new skills in older students such as soldering and understanding the structure of semiconductors.

See Máire’s project at the Science on Stage workshop at the ISTA conference in Maynooth on the 8th April.