Tech Post # 4: Switches

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This is a picture of my switch, and the link is to a video of my switch in action.

This week in tech we were making switches out of materials around the room. Mine is made of cardboard, tin foil, clothesline clips, aluminum foil, popsicle sticks, and rubber bands. How my switch worked is you would connect the clothes pins to  the cardboard in the center  and press down to the base. The reason this works is there is aluminum foil on the bottom of the square and the top of the base. We clipped 1 alligator clip to the base and 1 clip on the square these clips were also connected to a breadboard with an LED light. Because aluminum foil is conductive when the two pieces connected the circuit  was complete, turning the light on.

Tech Post #3: Soldering


This week in tech we started our soldering  unit. The first step was to think of ideas, but there was a catch, you could only use five wires. The next  step was to create a circle/ the frame. We had to wrap a wire around piece of wood, then twist the excess wire tightly and shape it into a wrapped circle. The circle was later used to string the charms on to the necklace. The next step was to cut the five wires and bend them into the shapes we wanted them. Then came the scarier part, In order to connect  the wires we had to solder. The soldering iron gets up to 842 degrees Fahrenheit. I was decently scared for this step, but in the end I just relaxed and was able to solder. I made the lighting bolt charm in the photo, but I didn’t make the J charm. Soldering is just using a hot iron to melt a smaller wire, when the wire melts it becomes like a glue to the charm letting you stick the pieces together, but DON’T TOUCH IT! Remember the iron is extremely hot.

Tech Post #2: Atoms


This week in tech we learned about atoms. In every atom there are electrons, neutrons, and protons.  The neutrons and protons are in the nucleus which  is located in the middle of the atom. The electrons are around the nucleus. As you can see in the diagram, protons have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge and neutrons are neutral. If the amount of protons and electrons are even then the atoms charge is zero if there are more protons, the charge is positive, if there are more electrons, then the charge is negative.