Paper circuit chanukiyah (#Chanukah #menorah) made with my kids, throw back to first night 5778.

I was especially proud of the rolled up switches that added the next LED candle for each night as it was unrolled.

Happy Chanukah! 🕎

#MIT #Mazeldon

I'm blown away by all the enthusiasm my post about this paper circuit Chanukah project generated. Thanks, #Mazeldon!

For anyone still interested, I found a few stills from when we brought it to a classroom presentation about Chanukah.

Happy Chanukah, night 2!

@coreymcc I didn’t see the original. This is very cool.

@coreymcc

Can you provide a bit more info?

We have paper circuits we wanted to use with the kids while on vacation, we'd *love* to do this.

Specifically what do you mean by switches? How do the circuits complete without the LEDs to complete them, etc.

Thanks so much for this incredible inspiration!!!

@serge Thanks! :)

It's actually nine circuits, one for each branch. Unfortunately, that means a whopping nine batteries. It was laid out on a large poster board—you can get a sense of scale from the size of the batteries in the photo.

I left gaps at varying heights from right to left in the "base." The rolled up paper has straight wires up and down. The straight wires successively close the next circuit in line, lighting up the next candle in line (plus the shamash).

Make sense? Lmk if ?'s

@serge P.S. This was something of an experiment, and one thing that didn't work as well as I had hoped was finding a way to apply enough pressure across the width of the paper-roll switches to keep it lit without holding it down. That was a bit of a bummer.

I really wanted a system that added the correct candle for each night. A more pragmatic design would be to just tape down separate switches for each of the branches you want lit each night. :)

DIY Home Made Capacitors (Paper capacitor and its theory)

It is a blog about DIY home made paper capacitor making. Also here explain about the capacitor types.

@coreymcc

This makes a lot more sense now, thank you!

I think for these kids, we'll just have a coin cell per day, rather than the extremely clever switch you created.

I was thinking you could use one single AAA battery, but yes, I guess at that point you're needing to increase the voltage (1.5v -> 3v), and decrease the amperage (750mAH -> 150mAH), which means you're now adding capacitors and resistors to your circuit, and you're no longer in "simple circuit" territory.

@serge Yes, no fancy electrical engineering here… The art was all in the PCB—er, PBC (Poster Board Circuit) wire layout. :)

Looking forward to seeing what you make if you try it!

@coreymcc May the story that unrolls for you and your kids be punctuated with frequent illuminating discoveries!

#HappyChanuka

@coreymcc This is amazing and please can we have a video of how it works!! #mazeldon

@coreymcc

Doesn’t EVERYONE make LED #holiday candelabras this time of year in science class?

#PublicSchool
#MedinatAmerica

@jewwhohasitall Lol, I know, right? My kid’s school was really inclusive, though! They had this alternative project where kids could tape a red LED to the nose of a deer. No clue what it meant, but my kid’s Christian friend was really excited about it. #MedinatAmerica
@coreymcc @jewwhohasitall This may be correlated with that Af Edom song I mentioned earlier, but given its obscurity, I think more research is required.
@coreymcc IRL the Rudolph story was written by a Jewish father whose wife had just died from cancer the previous month, who must have been single-parenting their 4 year old as he was writing the story. He subsequently married a Catholic co-worker, moved to my home town of Evanston, had 5 kids who didn't know their dad was Jewish, was widowed again at ~70, converted to Catholicism, and married his second wife's sister. I just learned the story last week, and it is still blowing my mind.
@jewwhohasitall @coreymcc I heard that those Maccabees weren’t averse to a bit of battery.
@coreymcc Was this made with stained glass adhesive copper foil, or something else? 🤔​