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Smarty has built her shaker flashlight in a class organized by our local organization for gifted children, Lyceum. This particular design combined flashlight function with a fun "colored light display", and kids actually soldered a circuit to make it work. Instructables build is similar, but does not require soldering. You will still need some electronic circuitry components to make it work:
- A breadboard
- White LED
- Diodes or a diode bridge
- A capacitor (470uF 16V)
- A resistor (300 Ohm)
- A short length of PVC pipe, if you don't have this nice plastic tube lying around :)
- Magnetic wire
- Strong neodymium magnets
How Is It Made?
this Instructables project or watching this video on YouTube.
How Does It Work?
Again, we were lucky, because our instructor gave an excellent introduction to the history of electricity and magnetism starting with Luigi Galvani, continuing to Michael Faraday, and then wrapping up with the battle between Edison and Westinghouse-Tesla. This shake light (also known as a Faraday flashlight) uses the Faraday law - voltage is produced when the magnet inside of the tube moves quickly back and forth within copper coiled wire. You can see a fun intro to the Faraday law in this video:
What kind of science or engineering projects did your kids do lately?
More Ideas for Electricity and Electronics?
From my blog:
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