On Thursday we continued working on our lanterns. All we really had left to do was solder our circuit together. We also had to find a way to make our switches stay put. The holes that we cut were big enough to hold switches in place, but we were worried that you could push them through so that they would fall inside. We found some glue, but it was so thick that when we put it in the hole it scraped of of the side of the switch. We worried that we would have the same problem with hot glue, and we knew from past experience that it did not stick well to our material. We resorted to using to using clear nail polish, and although neither of us had ever used nail polish as an adhesive, it worked pretty well. Here is a diagram of the circuit, which I stole from Hannah's blog. It's nothing too complicated, its just a matter of getting it a soldered and connected to the batteries.
Here is another three dimensional view, which I also stole from Hannah's blog! I like this picture because it gives me a better idea of what it looks like. The squares at the top are the LEDs, and the rectangles on the sides with the three prongs are the switches.
Then we thought about getting the two octagonal pieces that hold our batteries to stay put. We considered using scotch tape, but we didn’t think it held well enough. So, Erin found a Lego piece that to put between the top and the one of the octagons that was the right length. Our professor said that using Legos was cheating, but I would just call it being resourceful.
Finally, all we had left to do was solder. It was kind of a one person job, so I felt like I spent most of class looking over Hannah’s shoulder as she soldered. Luckily, Hannah is really good at soldering, way better than me at least.
We don’t have class on Monday, so on Thursday we just have to solder a couple more wires and hope it works. In the meantime, we also have to start thinking about our final project.
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