kids-toy

Combining children’s acquaintance with electrical circuits and modeling from dough can be very simple, using colored conductive and insulating dough. Replacing the wires with a test came up with the American Ann Mary Thomas. This idea caught on quickly after being demonstrated at a TED conference in 2011. The invented dough was called Squishy Circuits. You can cook it yourself, or you can wait for ready-made kits to appear on sale. But first things first.

So what did Ann Mary Thomas come up with? Imagine two types of dough: dough that conducts electricity and dough that is insulating. You sculpt a figure or application from plasticine, separating the positive part of the figure from the negative part with plasticine-insulator. After sculpting, stick LEDs, motors, tweeters and other electrical gizmos with contacts into conductive plasticine, of course, plus — to plus, minus — to minus. Then plug in the power and enjoy your interactive creation.

To understand what you can do, you need to look at the examples. The first example is the butterfly in the picture above. This is the simplest example. The white dough in the picture is an insulator.

Here is an example with a motor:

Here is an example with a motor and an LED:

And here is a video tutorial showing how to make 3 small projects:

In general, I think the readers’ imagination is all right, so let’s go ahead and figure out how to make such a dough at home and whether it can be purchased.

Conductive Test Recipe

Ingredients:

• • • • 1½ cups (355 ml) flour
      • 1 cup (237 ml) water
      • ¼ cup (59 ml) salt
      • 3 tbsp (44 ml) cream of tartar;
      • 1 tbsp (15 ml) vegetable oil;
      • Optional: food coloring.

Step by step:

1. Combine water, 1 cup flour, salt, cream of tartar, vegetable oil, and food coloring (if using) in a medium saucepan.

2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. The mixture will thicken and lumps will begin to form.

3. Continue heating and stirring until the mixture forms a ball and sticks to the edges of the pan.

4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Be careful, the dough is very hot.

5. Let the dough cool for a few minutes, and then knead the remaining flour to the desired consistency.

The resulting dough can be stored in an airtight container or plastic bag for several weeks.

During storage, water from the dough may condense inside the container. This is fine. Stir the dough after taking it out of the container where it was stored.

Isolation Test Recipe

Ingredients:

• • • • 1½ cups (355 ml) flour
      • ½ cup (118 ml) sugar
      • 3 tbsp (44 ml) vegetable oil;
      • ½ cup (118 ml) deionized (or distilled) water (important: you can use regular tap water, but the electrical resistance of this test will be lower);
      • Optional: food coloring.

Step by step:

1. Set aside half a cup of flour to use later. Combine remaining flour, sugar, food coloring (if using), and oil in a saucepan or large bowl.

2. Add a small amount of water (about 1 tablespoon) and stir until the water is absorbed. Repeat this step until large clumps start to form.

3. Put the dough on a tray, gathering it into one lump.

4. Add small portions of flour and water to get a pasty plastic consistency.

Store the finished insulating dough in the same way as the conductive dough.

Let’s talk about flowers

Although food coloring does not affect the properties of the dough in any way, it is recommended to leave the insulating dough white so that it can be easily distinguished from the conductive one. However, you can distinguish the dough by taste: the conductive dough is salty, and the insulating dough is sweet.

All projects on the Squishy Circuits website will only have white insulating dough so you can replicate the project correctly at home. The projects page is not yet complete, but it will be here. And on the video page you can see how to prepare the dough, some explanations of how it all works and sample projects.

Electrical part

As an electrical part, any electronic designers are suitable, including numerous sets based on Arduino. At a minimum, you will need power, such as a battery pack, wires, and LEDs. You can refer to the Squishy Circuits battery pack, which is designed for 4 AA batteries. Here is a tutorial video for beginners:

You will also need information about the resistance of the conductive test: each centimeter of a cylinder rolled from a conductive test with a diameter of 1 cm gives a resistance of about 80 ohms. Those. the longer you make the sausage through which the current flows, the dimmer the LED will burn.

Squishy Circuits Kits

The laziest can pay attention to the kits, which already have ready-made dough and electronics. A Kickstarter campaign has been launched to raise funds for the manufacture of just such kits. There are small and large sets, ranging from $8 to $50.

Unfortunately, there is no delivery to Russia here, so I will not cover this campaign in detail, especially since the dough can be made independently, and suitable electronics can be found in stores.