I am working with electrical currents and I have one battery and one light bulb and one wire. How do I make the light bulb light?
Place the battery on a metal table or sheet upright. Connect one bulb terminal to the positive using the wire and place the bulb such dat the other terminal touches the metallic return. Similar lines to the other answer The basic principle is just providing a common return path, just like a bus bar arrangement
It is really easy. All you have to do is use ground as the second wire. For example, if you don't want to run a complete circuit (two wires) between the battery and the light, simply ground the other end of the light and battery. Just about any metal object connected to ground will do.
If your dealing with an A.C. source of 115 volts, answers #1 #2 below prevail! It appears your trying to build a power supply even though 5 volts is somewhat strange, make a trip to Radio Shack. In answer to your question, for an experiment, as long as the insulation on the wires have not deteriorated, old wire will work fine. Low voltage below 32 volts is pretty save but STAY AWAY from 115-120 volts a.c. as it causes the muscles to contract and you can't let go of it!
touch the metal piece on the bottom of the light to + or - no battery then with the wire touch it to the other polarity and touch that to the other metal piece that is left on the light. sorry, its hard for me to make a lot of sense with this.
