Fuzzy Circuits with Chenille Stems!

[ada]

The PLIX team and many of our Ambassadors love paper circuits and making things glow, but working with copper tape can be a big struggle for all ages.

Are there other things we can use instead of copper tape? We tested out (99.9% pure) copper wire and chenille stems / pipe cleaners.

Copper wire
When my sister visited me this summer, we tried out real copper wire, to see how that would work. One thing that’s nice about it is that, unlike typical electric wire that has an outer sheath that needs to be stripped, copper wire can be used as-is. It was fun, though a bit difficult to “sculpt” the (26 gauge) wire into different shapes but it’s important that the two wires connected to the positive side and the negative side of the battery do not touch each other. She used some tape

Pro: play with bending wire, don’t need to strip off a non-conductive outer sheath
Con: wire can easily short-circuit because it’s unsheathed, can be hard to bend. Bending the LED wire legs too much will make them break. Sometimes hard to find pure copper wire.

(Bonus: my sister added a pony bead, wrapping the wire around it, as a mechanical switch so when it’s turned upside down, the light turns off)

Chenille Stems
Also known as pipe cleaners, chenille stems are conductive, and more importantly, you may already have it at your library!

It was much easier to work with the chenille stems than the copper wire, and it is commonly available. I wrapped a chenille stem around each LED leg, a different color for each side, so I can remember which is positive and which is negative. Though the material itself is easy to work with, the fuzz can get in the way of conductivity, so I had to mess around a bit and cut off the fuzz at each end of the chenille stems I was using.

Pro: Commonly available material, easy to bend and play with, familiar material for people, fuzzy part reduce likelihood of short circuiting, easy to wrap around LED legs. Different colors can help remind me which side is positive and which side is negative.
Con: fuzzy parts can get in the way of conductivity, and I had to carefully cut off some of the fuzz.

With a bit of masking tape to hold it together:

[kane]

Here’s my fuzzy circuit monster! I think with a little more time, it would have some fuzzy chenille stem arms. I’m not great at making paper circuit connections super secure, so they tend to blink, and I think that worked out well with this little dude’s design - there’s a short video here if you want to see the LEDs in action!

[ada]

Thanks for sharing Han! @kane

I turned your video into a gif!

FLASHING LIGHTS

[TheArtistLibrarian]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to utilize the 3D possibilities that the pipe cleaners gave so the first thing I thought of was those underwater creatures with bio-luminescence (like an angler fish). I thought maybe origami would be a quick way to make a 3D fish instead of just a flat paper cutout, so I found some fish origami instructions online to try.

With the pipe cleaners, I didn’t take off enough fluff at first (I think you need to have at least 1" of the wire exposed for the connections to work … Through the experience, our group agreed that depending on the age group, it would probably be best to prep the pipe cleaner tips in advance instead of having the participants do it.

I’d be interested in experimenting more with how to incorporate origami with the paper circuits …