Playdough For Fun and Profit 70
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."
yeah (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:4 year old? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet inconceivable... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
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...