A detailed teaching unit on the basic topics of photovoltaics: from the physical operating principle and the components of a real PV system, to a wide variety of experiments and the role of the energy transition in photovoltaics. There is a "digital excursion" to the roof of the school, where the students experience the school's own PV system live. (i.e. this lesson also includes the "PV livestream" lesson).
In this lesson, the students experience the interplay between theory, experiment and technical application using the school's own PV system.
This enables process-related skills to be acquired in the areas of gaining knowledge, communicating and evaluating. The focus is on an experiment case and a PV livestream. The students learn basic knowledge through theoretical units, validate this through experiments they carry out themselves and establish valuable practical relevance through exchanges with a technician. In this way, the school's own PV system is used as a teaching aid in addition to ecological and economic aspects.
The PV experiment set or the PV teaching material system from Solar for Schools Bildung gGmbH are required for this. Optionally, instead of the PV teaching material system, you can use the school's own PV system, if available.
Subject: Physics
Year: 8th-9th grade
Duration: 2x45 minutes + 2x90 minutes
Investigations on PV cells
Independently measure currents and voltages in series and parallel connections of solar modules.
Vary external influencing factors (e.g. angle of inclination, shading) and draw conclusions for the optimal use of solar modules, which they formulate, for example, in the form of an operating manual.
Testing the usability of solar modules in different technical applications.
Investigate experimentally the structure and properties of other sources of electricity (e.g. model experiment on the galvanic element, investigation of the output voltages of different power supplies, internal resistance and terminal voltage of a battery and a solar cell).
Interpret selected observations using their theoretical knowledge of electrical circuits.
- Basics PV Teacher's Script and Exercise Book
- PV Experiments Teacher Script and Solutions
- PV livestream teacher script
- 3 Presentation for the classroom