Descending Sun

This is a project that I made using switches. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate how basic circuitry works using switches which allows one to control the flow of electricity.

First assemble your supplies. Bare minimally you will need a coin cell battery, some copper tape, at least one LED, and paper. I used one sheet of paper as my base, another sheet of paper that I cut like a snowflake and some puff balls for design aesthetic, and three LED's.

I made quite a few mistakes with this project so I will go over what to do and what not to do. At first I didn't realize that the copper strips were actually tape so I used tape to secure them but really what you want to do is use the adhesive on the other side to secure your copper to the paper. One strip will serve as your ground bus and will connect to one side of the coin cell battery and a separate strip will serve as your power bus and will connect to the other side of the battery. Unlike this picture and more like in the next photo example, you will want to have one leg of the LED touching one strip of copper and the other leg touching the other strip of copper. If one leg comes in contact with both strips or both legs are touching the same copper strip this will not work! You also want to have several spaces cut out on one strip which will allow us to create the switch and control the flow of electricity.

In this photo example I corrected my mistake by placing one leg of the LED under my paper snowflake and on top of the copper strip and another leg of the LED on top of the paper snowflake and the other copper strip. This allows you to keep the power and ground bus separate which is necessary for the electricity to flow.

On the inside of my folded sheet of paper that has served as the base for my project, I taped a coin cell battery. One copper strip must connect to one side of the battery and another copper strip must connect to the opposite side of the battery.

Here, I put very small pieces of tape on the backside of three small pieces of copper strips (again, you do not have to do this because the back of the copper tape has its own adhesive). I then placed them, tape side up, on the cut out spaces on the inside of the paper snowflake. I then pressed the snowflake closed so that when the copper strips adhered, they'd be in the exact spot needed to create the switch and turn the LED's on.

So basically, they way this works is that when you press on each puff ball the corresponding LED lights up. Unfortunately in the end, my LED's did not light up but I did learn quite a bit by making so many mistakes. Once I realized the copper had adhesive on the back I began reworking my project to make it look cleaner. This allowed me to discover how difficult copper tape is because it is incredibly sticky. It also bunches up pretty quickly so you should be quite deliberate about what you are doing when using copper tape. I also tried to troubleshoot why the LED's weren't lighting up to no avail. Once everything was taped down and in place it was pretty difficult to disconnect and find the problem area. Needless to say, it is very important to make sure the appropriate leg of the LED is connected to the corresponding bus and that the copper tape is connected to the appropriate side of the battery.