For this week’s homework, I made a switch using a toy car. When the toy car hit aluminum foil, the LED lights up. I struggled with coming up with an idea at first because I couldn’t think of a switch that can be controlled without hands. Then I decided to experiment with what I have around me and try to come up with an idea.
Experimentation
I began with testing out different conductive materials to decide which material I should use for conducting. I tested with a strawberry, water, aluminum foil.
After testing different materials, I decide to use aluminum foil for its high level of conductivity and malleability, which offers more potential and freedom for building up my switch.
Then I chose a toy car to be my switch because it has wheels and thus I don’t need to build extra things to make it move. I decided to turn the hit from toy car onto aluminum foil into a trigger for conducting electricity.
Sketch
Prototyping
I first prototyped to see where and how I should attach the jump wire onto the car. After a few rounds of testing, I decided to hide the wire at the side of the car and cover it with the aluminum foil.
Then I moved onto a smoother surface to test how the hit works. As the video shows, the switch worked as LED did lit up. However, the light was a bit faint and flickering, which was a result of bad connection. The switch worked perfectly fine when I dragged the car and attach it onto the other foil paper. Then I figured it was because the angle of hit was random each time, so a strong lightening cannot be guaranteed. The best angle for a perfect hit was with a little tilt. Thus, I used paper to build a slide for my car in order to provide both momentum and angle. In this way, the front end of the car can be fully connected with the other foil paper to give enough current.