Tinkering with LED lights and pipe cleaners

Recently we have been exploring creating simple circuitry tinkering projects. Last week in a 4th grade class we explored a project using pipe cleaners and LED lights. I had initially intended to use electrical wire but thought, why wouldn't colorful pipe cleaners be conductive? After stripping the ends off of two pipe cleaners and testing them out, I realized that they were conductive and the cool thing is that you can keep adding pipe cleaners to the structure and the circuit will not break. Unless you cut off the fuzz, the pipe cleaners stays insulated. In a google search I saw that there were several Instructable projects using pipe cleaners and circuitry: light up necklace and light up ornaments.
It was also cool to find this Stanford graduate project using pipe cleaners in a DIY kit to introduce  high school students to digital electronics: Logic Bites

MATERIALS FOR EACH STUDENT: 2 pipe cleaners with ends stripped of fuzz, five additional pipe cleaners, construction paper, tape, small rubber band, a disc battery (from IKEA store), one LED light with anode and cathode legs curled. Colored pencils optional. (more materials info here)

The simple circuit: two pipe cleaners (with ends stripped of fuzz), one LED light (with legs curled), two paper clips, rubber band and disc battery.

1. Show samples of Alexander Calder's wire art for inspiration.
2. Students check that their light works with their battery by having it straddle the battery. Set the battery aside.
3. Students wrap a  raw wire end of a pipe cleaner to a paper clip. They take their second pipe cleaner and attach a paper clip in the same way. They should have two pipe cleaners, each with a paper clip foot. They should double check that they wrapped the wire tightly around the paper clips and that the wire of the pipe cleaner is touching the wire of the paper clip.
4. Now for the LED light attachment. The other end of each pipe cleaner is wrapped around one loop of the LED light (the anode and cathode legs need to be curled with pliers to create the loops). The LED light now looks like it has two pipe cleaner legs with paper clip feet.
5. Students test out the circuit by touching the paper clips at the same time to different sides of the battery. 
6. At this point they have a working circuit. They attach one paper clip foot to the battery with a rubber band or tape. The other paper clip foot is the on/off switch that they tap against the battery to turn on.

 Students now pick up extra five pipe cleaners and a sheet of paper to turn their circuit into wire art.

 More photos of the student work here: Tinkering with pipe cleaners & LED lights 

LED light on.

The on/off switch

a clown with light up hat, a  student's rabbit with light up nose, and a student's blue tree with light up star on top.

A student's light up flower

Moble Maker/Tinkering Cart

Main cart components assembled.

A few years ago my dad (a retired toy designer) made this cart for my niece to sell cupcakes from. Because of permitting issues, she ended up not using it, but I recently saw parts of it in storage at my sister's garage.  This is the perfect solution for the Maker/Tinkering cart I have been envisioning creating.

I'm going to take around this mobile cart and invite kids to creatively tinker. We will stock it with muffin tins of simple making tools: cell batteries, led lights, paper circuity projects, conductive clay, brushbot parts, hacked solar lights (from garden stakes), electrical wire, switches, and hacked toy parts, etc. I have been stewing on creating a mobile cart to take around Japantown, Mayfair and Alum Rock for two years now. Recently I saw this blog posting about  a mobile 3D printer cart, so obviously others are thinking of going mobile with Maker tools as well. I hope to get my cart and supplies ready to take out on the streets of San Jose in the spring and summer. This cupcake cart would fit right in with the other carts roaming the neighborhoods selling paletas, chicharrones (fried pig skins) and Mexican candies.

Below are some photos of the set up. I need to get a new cart to fit into the assembly as the original one was hacked for another project at my sister's work. I'll post new photos once I get the assembly complete and ready to go again. I am dreaming of getting a 3D hobby printer for it, too! Dreaming big! All the supplies on the mobile cart will be used in our Maryfair Art & Design Thinking Summer Camp at the Mayfair Community Center and at the Joseph George Community Center Lab. I'm partnering with the Alum Rock Educational Foundation to expand the Art & Design Thinking camp.

All components and accessories: basic 3 parts, cup cake display carousel, cup cake storage/

transportation trays, screened bug deterrent display screen domes.

Three components before assembly:  Container Store folding shopping cart, pink umbrella 

with extended umbrella shaft and fabricated cup cake shell with prime/gloss white painted.

Progression of cup cake shell design progress/ top views

1. Left: sizing model with cardboard discs and wood separators

2. Middle: intermediate all-cardboard model with experimental fluting hot-melted in position

3. Right: finished model with 1/4" plywood discs screwed to 15 wood stake separators, with scored

plastic strips hot-melted to both top and bottom discs and wood stakes.

Note that squarish hole in bottom disc slips over shopping cart basket, while the slot in the upper

disc enables the shell to capture the handle. The upper disc rests on the top of the basket, and

the cupcake shell is sufficiently locked to the basket form.

Progression of cup cake shell designs/ bottom views

"bikes" by 3dom on Flickr (cc By-NC 2.00) Image of bikes in Laos.

Looking further down the line, it would be cool to put the set-up on a bike and also have a 3D printer on the Mobile Maker Cart.