Whenever beginning a creative project, it is helpful to consider its component pieces and make sure you have an accurate understanding of how they will work together. No where is this more evident than when working with circuitry. Circuitry is a favorite maker topic because it forms the literal basis for computers, and thus, robots, and having a solid understanding of circuits helps in coding and robot design.
However, with so many circuitry projects available, what is the best way to figure out how to explore? As I have said, it is vital to have an understanding of the basics. For now, I'm going to focus on the very basics:
Conductor: a material that transmits electricity
Insulator: a material that strongly resists the flow of electricity
Load: part of a circuit that makes something happen, like a light bulb or motor
Battery: a device that converts chemical energy to electrical energy
Flammable: something that catches fire easily
Short circuit: when you accidentally give electricity a really easy pathway that causes it to move really fast and create lots of heat
Let's start there. When first learning about electricity, you never want to use the electricity coming from a wall. It is far too strong and you could hurt yourself. So, focusing on a battery, the basic idea is to connect each terminal of a battery to a load: electricity flows, something happens, yay!
However, if we want to do something with the electricity, we need to have a better understanding of how to make it go somewhere. We can move the light around as long as we connect it to the battery with conductive materials. Metals are generally conductive, but many other things are as well. I'm going to show a project I did below that will help illustrate the important components of a simple circuit, but always remember that it is better to take these pieces and make something that is from your imagination.
As always, I tried to stick with easily attainable materials, but the brads are really useful for this and not necessarily something you would have at home. I'm still going to use them, but when you see how they work you'll probably be able to think of alternate materials.
A note on batteries: I am a big fan of rechargeable batteries in general, but when short circuited, rechargeable batteries can explode. When you are learning, you short circuit sometimes, so I generally avoid rechargeables for this type of project.
This project uses a strand of burned out Christmas lights. Many of the bulbs are still good even when the strand won't light, so I cut one off. You can use strong scissors for this, and also for stripping the insulating green coating, but you have to be careful not to cut the wire. The best tool is a wire stripper, but in case you don't have one, you can make scissors work. Just cut gently so that you are only cutting through the green outer layer, then pull it off the end to expose the wire.
I wanted to make a circuit with a switch, and I wanted the switch to be on the same side as the light with everything else hidden. I punched a hole in the cardboard and threaded the wires from the light through. I taped the wires down in the back.
When creating circuits, one thing that is important to keep track of is flammability or meltability. If something is flammable or can melt, then a short circuit is a bigger problem because the heat generated can cause your project to catch fire or melt. I used cardboard with this project which is flammable, and that meant I had to be extra careful about making sure it didn't short circuit. The advantage of cardboard is that it is an insulator, so it would not interfere with the circuit. The best plan is to coat all of the conductive parts of the circuit with an insulator that will not melt or burn, and electrical tape is great for that. But since this project's goal was primarily to illustrate aspects of a circuit rather than to create a functional piece, I did not coat the entire circuit.
I started with the switch, which I created by punching two holes and attaching brads, with a paper clip on one brad.
Then, I thought carefully about the circuit pathway: one of the bulb wires needed to be connected to one terminal of the battery using conductive material, and the other bulb wire had to be connected to the other terminal. The two pathways couldn't touch, and one of them had to be broken by the switch. Using glue stick and foil, here's what I came up with:
I used a 9V battery, which enabled the light to be very bright; this would also work with a AA, AAA, or D battery, but since they are much lower voltage, the bulb will be dimmer. This photo shows the battery attached via rubber band to the cardboard, but I ended up adding another rubber band to hold the foil ends to the battery terminals because they kept coming loose.
As long as I was careful that all conductive parts of the circuit were connected and that each pathway was kept apart from the other, all I had to do was touch the paper clip to the other brad to make the light illuminate.
Foil is very brittle and so a circuit like this is fragile and needs frequent repair, but it is a great way to explore how a circuit works.
With a class, I did a similar project (but without the switch) using the wires from the Christmas lights instead of foil. They designed lampshades, which turned into a wonderful creative design project.
Enjoy!