Simulations, animations and videos to teach Electricity - and now Radioactivity, too!

Unique insights into the physics. Easy for teachers, but amazing for students.

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Teach with the circuit simulation

Our circuit simulations let students ‘see’ current and energy

Move seamlessly from visualisation to the mathematics.

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Our decay simulation shows changing nuclei AND radiation

Bring half-life to life, and see the iron-clad connection with radioactivity

See videos and quizzes

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Use 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

Lessons covering the whole GCSE current electricity and radioactivity syllabus

Electricity Explained gives depth to the GCSE syllabus, rather than expanding it.

Series and parallel circuit simulations plus electricity animations

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Looks great - sure. But it's the physics under the hood that makes us different

Everything is founded on a deep understanding of electric circuits and how to teach them.

Do your existing resources get these right?

How batteries behave

Batteries are constant voltage providers. (They’re not constant current providers)

If you change the resistance in a parallel circuit the battery provides a different current. (It doesn't just ‘split’ differently)

Batteries run out of chemicals to react (physical) or their store of energy (theoretical). (They don't run out of electrons)

Resistance in simple circuits

Heating happens where the resistance is, but increasing the resistance causes less heating, not more. (Charges don’t expend more energy ‘overcoming’ a higher resistance)

If you increase resistance, batteries work less hard, not harder. (Batteries don't struggle harder to try and reach some target current)

The rope loop model gets both of these wrong.

Sub-microscopic view

Charges make very slow progress, but are already there everywhere in the circuit, and start moving everywhere at almost exactly the same time. (They don't start from the battery and move quickly)

All changes to current or potential happen everywhere nearly instantly, not just connecting and disconnecting. (The speed of the charges is not the speed of the change)

Trusted by physics teachers for more than 20 years

Furry Elephant is reborn

Since then, Furry Elephant has been through many incarnations, which finally came to an end when Flash was dropped by major browsers in 2020.
I had long-since moved away from physics teaching, but was amazed and humbled by the number of teachers contacting me from all over the world asking how they were going to teach electricity without Furry Elephant.
So I’ve rewritten the major simulations in JavaScript, and repurposed many of the most popular visualisations into gifs or videos, which is what you see today in this brand new incarnation - Electricity Explained.

It’s all about teaching and learning

The circuit simulation is a means to an end - I’m trying to clarify the ideas that are difficult to teach and to be explicit about misconceptions - misconceptions that I certainly had when I was a beginning teacher under the great Jon Ogborn at London University Institute of Education.
For me, it’s not about going beyond the syllabus, but being crystal clear about the minimum knowledge you need to have a full understanding of the absolute foundations - for example that the charges are already there, and that they progress very slowly

Crunchy physics in a soft coating

It’s not about being abstruse or complex, it’s about having an insight into how to explain the most fundamental ideas in the simplest and most accessible way possible.
I’m quite clever, but I’m not very, very clever, and that means that I have to go on the same painful learning journey as most students and teachers.
As Jon Ogborn once said to me ‘I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, but I’ve thought about it very hard.’ I’ve thought about teaching electricity very hard over the past two decades - I think I understand it about 8.5/10. You can judge for yourself. Welcome to Electricity Explained.