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

Re:PROFIT IS PHASE 3 !!

[theshowmecanuck]

WTF? I didn't see three phase circuits.

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.

Re:yeah

[davester666]

We MUST put a halt to this immediately. We can't have children messing about with this kind of thing.

Hell, terrorists might even try to build the electronics for a bomb using this in the middle of a flight, because the TSA still lets you have playdough. Combining this with the C4 they have stuffed inside body cavities, it's like manna from heaven.

Re:looks like a booger better send in the Tissue

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you're past the 'I'm going to stick this up my nose' phase

It's narrow minded people like you that hold back scientific progress, the smelloscope is a fantastic invention.

Kirkchoff's law fail

[Zinho]

It makes me sad to read the following snippet from the article:

Chain multiple LEDs through the conductive dough, and you’ll notice the ones at the end are far dimmer than the first few. That’s because less current is making its way down the series; the current only has one path, and that’s through each LED.

Now a bunch of kids are going to go through life thinking that current gets used up as it goes through the circuit. The same current will be flowing through every component of the circuit; it's only got one path, after all.

Don't get me wrong, I love this article and I'm probably going to try this with my kids, too. It's just that I'm going to teach them Kirchoff's laws while I'm at it.

Re:Kirkchoff's law fail

[Clueless Moron]

No, LEDs are only full brightness or off. To make an LED dim you pulse the current through it. It isn't actually dimmer, it just looks dimmer because it's turning on and off faster than you can see.

Nonsense. You can make an LED anything from barely lit to full tilt by nothing more than controlling the current via the loading resistor. Try it yourself.

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...