CENCO® AP Physics Lab 2.07: Examining Factors Affecting Electrical Current

Explore resistance in series and parallel circuits.

Introducing the new CENCO AP Physics lab series!

Ideal for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, IB DP Physics, and advanced/honors physics courses, each of the 35 experiments is aligned with the revised College Board AP curriculum. These innovative labs go way beyond traditional exercises, turning real-world scenarios into true guided-inquiry investigations. Students are given a goal, but the investigation is driven by their ideas. As they draw conclusions, students report their results using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning model. The teacher guides and student manuals are authored and reviewed by AP Physics teachers with decades of combined experience, so you can trust the setups to be successful in your classroom. All labs come complete with instructions and materials for one lab group of 2 to 4 students. For your convenience, labs are packaged to allow you to purchase only what is required for each experiment.

In this investigation, students measure the voltage and current across resistors in different configurations and apply Ohm’s Law to verify their individual and combined resistance. Using their observations, students develop the mathematical relationships for resistors in series and parallel circuits. Finally, they extend their understanding to incandescent light bulbs with different power ratings.