Playdough For Fun and Profit

morgan_greywolf writes with this snippet from Wired:"You're never too young (or too old) to start learning the joys of electronics. You don't need to know how to solder, or even how to plug circuit components into a breadboard. As long as you're past the 'I'm going to stick this up my nose' phase, this homemade playdough circuit project is a great way to introduce kiddos and adults alike to basic circuits and electricity."

Comments

yeah

[buanzo]

useful, cool, geeky and pro-learning and DIY. great.

Re:yeah

[mcgrew]

I'm surprised they let you have paydough on planes.

What would be better than powering the circuit with batteries would be to make the batteries, too. You can make a battery from a lemon, a galvanized roofing nail, and a piece of thick copper wire. Not sure if it would power an LED (Although I'm pretty sure it would) but I suppose you could have a six (or more) lemon battery. A single lemon will power an LCD calculator, I did that with my kids when they were little. You can get around a volt from a lemon, not sure how many milliamps. And I don't remember if the copper side or the zinc side was positive; the kids are grown now and it was a long time ago.

The LED is good for demonstrating the workings of a diode, since it is a diode and lights up. A red/green diode is great for that, one of the ones that light red with one polarity, green with the opposite polarity, and yellow with AC.

Seems you could make a playdough capacitor, too. You could conceivably make playdough resistors by mixing the conductive and nonconductive doughs. I wish I'd known the conductive properties of playdough when my kids were little. Maybe if one of them makes me a grandpa...

Re:4 year old?

[carlzum]

Not at all. I started doing kitchen experiments with my daughter when she was 3. Once she gets how one conducts and the other doesn't, she'll be able to try different combinations and see how the current moves, degrades, etc. She may not learn the technology, but a four year old's ability to learn through experience is incredible. Don't forget, she learned English in less than two years using observation alone.