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Electricity flows in a circuit.
Insulators are materials that do not allow this electricity to flow.
You can test what makes a insulator by building a simple circuit with a light bulb and then inserting the item to test.
This simple circuit is testing whether the two paper clips are conductors or insulators.
When the two paper clips are held together, the bulb lights up, so they are conductors.
If we put something else into the circuit instead of paper clips, we can see if it is a conductor or an insulator.
If we put a felt tip pen into the place of the paper clips and joined up the wires, the bulb would not work.
The felt tip pen is an insulator as it is made of plastic.
In this activity, we will choose different items from a list that we think are insulators.
Ready to have a go?
