The Unbirthday Candle
Video of the Unbirthday Candle in action
Concept
When the assignment of making a switch that doesn’t need the use of one’s hands was introduced, I first thought of other body parts that could be used to trigger a switch. Then, I realized that touch is not even needed — a switch could be triggered by blowing! Initially, I wanted to make some sort of fan or windmill that would bring the two ends of the wire together and complete the circuit, but when I was browsing through the IM Lab materials closet, the idea of a candle came to me. A folded piece of foil is attached to the end of one wire, and when one blows on it, the foil swings around and comes into contact with the end of another wire, making the LED light up. I thought it was kind of funny that blowing on the candle caused the LED to light up (since, traditionally, one blows on a candle to put out the light), so I named this candle the “Unbirthday Candle” after the unbirthday celebration from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland film.
Highlight
A highlight of my design is how the bottom of the candle is attached to the piece of paper I used as a base. I quickly discovered that just taping a tube of paper to another paper was not stable, so I made both the candle and the base thicker by folding the paper a few times. Then, I fanned out the bottom of the candle to create a wider surface that I could then attach to the base, and cut slots for the two wires to be fed through. With these slots, and the holes on top of the candle, it was relatively easy to make adjustments to how much wire I wanted sticking out.
Reflection
This assignment was very helpful in terms of making me more comfortable with how a breadboard works. Initially, I set up the circuit by copying the image in the lecture notes, like so:
However, after a while, it became clear that it was rather awkward to have the two black wires be so far from the candle. It was hard to adjust them to the desired length. Thus, I used an additional red wire to connect the two power strips so I could freely experiment with different circuit configurations, and eventually settled on the one below, which gives both wires easy access to the slots in my candle.
Ideas for future work or improvements
An improvement could be made by somehow stuffing the inside of the candle with paper or adhesive material, so that the black part of the wire can be completely concealed within the tube. This would make for a more “realistic” looking candle. I would also place a small tube of foil within the two layers of foil that make up my “flame” so that the foil can only rotate, not tilt side to side. Currently, sometimes, the switch does not work because the flame will tilt too much and not connect with the other wire when blown.