Stop for a minute and try to imagine your world without electrical power and electronic gadgets. No convenient appliances in the kitchen, no electric lights. No computers, MP3 players, television, or video games. Your life would be completely different, wouldn't it? Electricity and electronics are so central to modern life that, paradoxically, they're easy to overlook. Stop overlooking them now and try a hand at one of our projects to explore the science of how electricity works or build a cool electronics gadget.
Dimmer switches let us control the brightness of a light, anywhere from completely off to full brightness. This can be nice when you want to set the brightness "just right," as opposed to a regular light switch that only lets you turn a light on or off. It turns out that you can make a dimmer switch out of an everyday object—a pencil! Try this project to find out how a dimmer switch can control the brightness of a light.
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Elec_p056
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Time Required
Very Short (≤ 1 day)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
A kit for this project is available from our partner .
Cost
Low ($20 - $50)
Safety
Short circuits can get very hot and present a burn hazard. Never connect the positive and negative ends (red and black wires) of the battery pack directly to each other. Adult supervision is required for whittling the pencil.
You've seen that a magnet's attractive force can cause a small object (like a paper clip) to "jump" to the magnet. So a magnetic field can act through the air, but what about other materials? Here's an experiment you can do to find out. You'll need a strong bar magnet, a stack of books, a paper clip, some thread and tape. Place the bar magnet underneath the top book in your stack, so that it sticks out. Tie a piece of thread (as long as the stack of books is high) to a paper clip. You…
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This is a straightforward project that shows you how data can be digitized and stored on magnetic recording media. You'll learn how alpha-numeric characters are digitized, and you'll use bar magnets to represent the individual data "bits." You'll also learn about how much information can be stored in a small space (recording density), and how magnetic data can be erased.
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Elec_p026
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Time Required
Very Short (≤ 1 day)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
A large number of specialty magnets are needed for this project.
Have you tried our first and second play dough circuits projects? Are you a master circuit artist, ready to try something even bigger and better? Try this project to see if you can build a three-dimensional light-up sculpture.
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Elec_p075
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Time Required
Very Short (≤ 1 day)
Prerequisites
This project requires understanding the Introduction material in the first projects in this series:
[# ProjectIdea Name="Elec_p073" Value="HtmlAnchor" HtmlText="Light Up Your Play Dough!" #] and
[# ProjectIdea Name="Elec_p074" Value="HtmlAnchor" HtmlText="Add Even More Lights" #]
Material Availability
Kit available for purchase from our partner
.
See Materials tab for details.
Cost
Low ($20 - $50)
Safety
Never connect the battery pack's terminals directly to each other; this is called a short circuit and can make the batteries and wires get very hot. Do not connect the LEDs directly to the battery pack without using play dough; this will burn out the LEDs.
You may be familiar with permanent magnets—the kind that hang on a refrigerator. But did you know that other magnets, called electromagnets, can be turned on and off? When turned on, electromagnets act just like permanent magnets, but if you turn them off, their magnetic properties disappear. Electromagnets are an important part of many electronic devices, like motors, loudspeakers, and hard drives. You can create an electromagnet with a simple coil of wire and a battery. In this project,…
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Elec_p035
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Time Required
Very Short (≤ 1 day)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
This project requires specialty items, available from our partner
.
Cost
Low ($20 - $50)
Safety
The electromagnet can become hot during periods of extended use.
When your parents were kids, they probably wore polyester. Static cling was a major household issue! Now everybody wears cotton, which does not get static cling nearly as much. Why are some materials more susceptible to static cling than others? Investigate how well different materials produce static electricity by making a homemade electroscope and testing it out in this science project.
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Elec_p023
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Time Required
Very Short (≤ 1 day)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
Readily available
Cost
Very Low (under $20)
Safety
When working with electricity, take precautions and beware of electric shock.
"Paper circuits" are a fun way to mix electronics and art by adding lights directly to a painting or drawing. These lights need a battery to power them, and typically you would use wires to connect them. In paper circuits, though, many materials can be substituted as "wire," including special types of paint, ink, and even aluminum foil. There are also different options for what type of battery you can use. Which materials do you think will work best? Try this project to find out!
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Elec_p085
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Time Required
Average (6-10 days)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
This project requires special circuit materials. See the Materials and Equipment list for details. Estimated project time includes time for shipping specialty materials.
Solar cells are devices that can be used as a source of power when there is light shining on them, but they stop producing energy when they are not in the light. One way to store the solar energy for later use is to use a solar cell to charge something called a capacitor. The capacitor stores the energy as an electric field, which can be tapped into at any time, in or out of light. In this electronics science project, you will use parts of a solar car to experiment with the energy storage…
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Elec_p063
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Time Required
Long (2-4 weeks)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
You will need to order the supercapacitor car online. See the Materials and Equipment list for details.
