- Hey, everyone. This is Manju, with Sally Ride Science.
And today we'll be making a fun Craftronics project.
We are making a popsicle stick flashlight.
Here are the things that you will need to make this project.
You need some aluminum foil,
a coin battery,
an LED, some binder clips, some tape, a pair of scissors
and some popsicle sticks.
I've used my popsicle stick as a measurement,
to cut out four strips of the aluminum foil.
I have two long strips and I have two short strips.
Let's get this out of the way for the moment
and talk about the electric components.
That is the battery
and the LED.
I need to fid out what the positive and the negative
on the battery and LED are,
in order to finish the circuit,
because if you,
if you've been in one of my classes before,
you remember that in an electric circuit
the positive connects to positive
and the negative connects to negative.
The positive and the negative on the battery
are pretty easy to find.
Oops, sorry about the reflection there.
Uh, the positive has a big plus on one side,
that's usually the positive side.
And the textured side is usually the negative side.
It's pretty easy on the LED as well.
The LED is, as you can see,
have different size legs, alright?
So I have the longer leg here,
that's going to be my positive
and the shorter leg here, on the left,
that's going to be my negative.
To test out my LED, just to check if it's working,
I'm going to attach the negative side
or the shorter side of the LED
to the textured side of the battery
and the positive to the positive
and my LED glows.
So this is how I test whether my
LED is working.
Alright, let's get this out of the way for a second.
This is going to be our switch mechanism,
it's just a simple binder clip that you can find at home.
Uh, make sure that if you are using a binder clip
it has to be completely made out of metal,
like mine is.
Some are made out of plastic and it won't work,
because plastic doesn't conduct any electricity.
This is made of steel.
The ones with the black tops, also are made of steel
and will conduct electricity.
For the next step,
I'm going to mark my popsicle stick with positive on side
and negative on the other side,
so I can keep track of which side my LED is facing.
In order to attach my LED to my popsicle stick,
I am going to use the two small pieces of metal
that we cut out.
I'm going to keep the piece of aluminum on one side,
this is my negative side,
so the shorter leg goes on this side.
I'm going to attach it,
like so.
Let's flip this over
and I am going to insert my little aluminum foil.
Right under there.
And this should hold, if your LED is new.
Alright so the one side is my negative side,
the shorter leg,
and the other side is my positive side,
with the longer leg.
And I've placed the two small strips of aluminum
on the underside of the LED.
For the next step,
I'm going to take the longer piece of the aluminum foil,
that we cut out,
and sandwich the LED leg
\between the two thin pieces of aluminum foil.
I do nee to take this down,
but before I do, I need to make sure,
that my other leg is sandwiched
between the other two pieces as well.
I'm going to hold these down
and I'm going to put a tape around this.
I have taped down my LED's
and the four pieces of aluminum foil, that we cut out.
Make sure that there is nothing between
the aluminum foil and the legs of the LED's.
The plastic tape goes around,
to make sure that everything is in place
and the LED legs are always touching
the aluminum foil.
Let's attach the battery next.
Now I'm going to attach my battery to the popsicle stick.
I have my positive side facing up.
This is the positive side on the battery.
I am going to place the positive side face down,
making sure that it's touching the aluminum foil
and I am going to tape this down,
leaving a little bit of the better metal exposed.
And the rest of it
tapes down.
This way so it's held in place.
Make sure that your battery, the underside of the battery,
is still touching the aluminum foil.
Do not tape down the other side.
This aluminum foil is still hanging loose.
It's time to add our switch mechanism,
after the battery is attached
and the switch is going to be or little binder clip.
Before I attach the switch,
I'm going to make sure
that my positive side of the battery
is still attached to the aluminum foil on the underneath.
Only half the battery is taped
and the other half of the battery is still exposed to metal.
Let's flip this over.
I have final piece of aluminum foil here
that I'm gonna tape down, using my binder clip.
My binder clip is going to help complete the circuit.
One side goes down,
making sure that this metal arm
is touching the aluminum foil.
This circuit has a break right here,
because there is nothing connecting.
All circuits are a loop
and in order for me to finish the circuit,
I have to push this button down
and my LED glows.
This is going to be my on off mechanism.
And this is your popsicle stick flashlight.
Here is another version of the flashlight that I have made.
I have used a jumbo LED, instead of a regular one.
I have also used copper tape,
copper adhesive tape, instead of aluminum foil.
You can find this on Amazon.
And it's pretty much the exact same design, right.
And the battery is also attached
with the help of the copper tape
and I've just made it double sided
and I've stuck the battery down.
This is a cleaner design
and I don't have any tapes hanging about.
Works the exact same way.
If you've come this far
and you've followed all of the steps
and your flashlight is still not working,
let's talk about some things that we can do
to troubleshoot your project.
Here are some of the pro, common problems that could arise.
Your metal leg of the binder clip
is touching the plastic portion of the tape
instead of the exposed battery.
Make sure that it is touching
the exposed metal of the battery.
One other thing may be you binder clip is made of plastic
and not metal and hence it's not conducting electricity.
Problem three.
My positive side of the battery
is not touching the aluminum foil that is in the bottom.
That could be your problem.
Another problem could be,
your battery just ran out of juice.
One other thing that could arise,
is that your LED legs
are somehow taped down with plastic tape
and it's not touching the metal.
Remember that we make the LED leg
and the aluminum foil sandwich first
and then tape over, so that the al,
the LED legs are always touching the aluminum foil.
There should be nothing between the aluminum foil
and the legs of the LED.
And all metal should be touching metal,
but not tape.
If you've followed all of these steps
and you have troubleshooted everything, so far,
your project should work.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
I hope you had fun making this.
Bye.