Skip to content

Inventors Ladder · Middle school · Grade 4–9

From Scratch

Build what the inventors built, with safe household parts: a lemon battery, an electromagnet, a motor, a generator, a telegraph, a light bulb, a crystal radio and a printing press.

0 of 8 topics passed

Start this course Skill map

8 topics in 3 units. Builds on Ancient and Medieval Inventors. Not sure this is the right course? Find your rung.

  • Passed
  • Review due
  • Learning
  • Ready to learn
  • Needs an earlier topic

Unit 1 Batteries, Magnets and Motors

4 topics

Make electricity from a lemon, turn it into magnetism, then motion, then back into electricity, the way Volta, Henry and Faraday did.

  1. A Lemon Battery, Like Volta's Pile
  2. A Nail Electromagnet, Like Sturgeon's and Henry's
  3. A Homopolar Motor, Faraday's 1821 Idea
  4. A Hand Generator, Faraday's 1831 Discovery

Unit 2 Messages, Light and Radio

3 topics

Send a message down a wire, make a wire glow, and hear a radio with no battery at all.

  1. A Telegraph, Like Morse's
  2. A Glowing Filament, Edison's and Swan's Problem
  3. A Crystal Radio with No Battery

Unit 3 The Printing Press

1 topics

Set type, ink it and pull the press, and see why one machine changed how the world shared ideas.

  1. A Printing Press, Gutenberg's Way