In front of a room of 25 astonished faces I dipped my finger into the brine and dabbed the last of the water onto the flower, the LED popping on and cries of “But but…where’s the battery?” echoing amid “Wait…what?”
This workshop focused on understanding how a battery works by taking the traditional model of a voltaic cell and crafting homemade batteries out of paper and wire with 9 to 11 year olds through the LCRC after school program. This project is part of Artengine’s community arts initiatives and is funded by the Community Foundation of Ottawa.
I devised two designs that utilized the absorbency of paper to act as the salt bridge between two dissimilar wires. Wiring together 6 cells produced enough current to light an LED for 2 hours. I had an additional challenge of making the design solder less to accomodate the size of the class and the technical challenges of not having hot irons in the room we were in. In preparation for the class I cut out bases and laid out the rows of holes in the paper ahead of time so that the kids could just focus on weaving the wires and decorating the paper.
All of the materials are common household items- salt, water, paper (the more absorbant the longer the LED stays lit), cardboard, the wire is easily purchased at a hardware store and the LEDs you can get at an electronics store. I’ve posted instructions on how to assemble them here. While testing the design the lights went through 6 uses of 2 hours each and it still seems to be going strong. After a while the metal will oxidize to the point of non-use, and then you can just recycle the parts or make something else with them! Here are some of the designs the kids made:
A fun multi-colored petaled flower.
The bases come from the cardboard of tissue boxes.
She was super quick in making it- one of the first ones to grasp it and be done!
A good shot at making the lamp version.
It was great to see so much excitement over batteries- adapting the functional aspects into the design itself allowed the kids to really grasp the workings of the light and empower them to not feel dependent on store-bought batteries to power the things around them.
[...] kids that teaches them how to make a salt water + paper based battery, which can power an LED. She writes: In front of a room of 25 astonished faces I dipped my finger into the brine and dabbed the last of [...]
[...] [Emily Daniels] has been teaching interactive electronics workshops geared towards children for some time now, recently holding a session that demonstrated how batteries work in a pretty novel fashion. [...]
[...] and electronic art teacher Emily Daniels has created these reusable water-controlled paper LED lights. After making two different designs (flower and lamp) with the soda box cardboard, Emily made six [...]
[...] [Emily Daniels] has been teaching interactive electronics workshops geared towards children for some time now, recently holding a session that demonstrated how batteries work in a pretty novel fashion. [...]