This was our last week of technology and it was really fun. We started by learning about breadboards. We learned how to make a led light light up. You do this by taking the longer wire on the led and attach it to the red wire. Then you take the shorter wire on the led and attach it to the black wire. The red and black wires are connected to the battery and as a result, they light up the led. Further in the week Mr. Calvert made breadboards for our tables with three different led lights on it. A red one, a blue one and a green one. Each of these three lights had two wires so that when you attached it to your switches, it would light up. Then we played the card game with our three switches. You basically take a deck of cards and split it in half. From there you would attach two wires to your switches. One on one tinfoil piece and one on the other. The one person flips half the deck of cards over and one person does the other one. The third person has to press down the switch that matches up with what the cards say. If there are two black cards you don’t do anything. If there’s a red card on the right, you press down the switch on the right and vice versa. And finally, if you have two red cards, you press the switch in the middle. This game was really fun, but hard because it required hand-eye coordination. On the final day we watched a documentary about the metals and why they were special. It was really interesting and tech was really fun.

This week was basically just for finishing up our switches. My switches were simple, but durable and efficient. For my first switch I used a popsicle stick, cardboard, tinfoil and a rubber band. All you have to do to operate it would be to press the popsicle stick down so that the tinfoil would touch tinfoil. The next switch had a big round area on it that when you pushed, would move forward through a hole until it hit the other wall that was covered in tinfoil. The final switch looked like an on/off switch where when you pressed one side down it would act as a lever and touch the tinfoil together. I am really proud of what my switches have become. We are soon going to play the card game that involves using our switches. I don’t know when we will do this, but I’m really excited.

Throughout the course of this week, we explored the topic circuits and switches to figure out how they work and how to create one. A circuit is a closed loop that carries electricity. For a circuit to work it requires a power source. In our case that would be a battery aka a cell. Circuits power things like lightbulbs. Without something for our circuits to do the electrons will flow too fast and overwork the battery. That’s why our project is to make a creative switch that powers a small lightbulb. The materials we had access to were cardboard, tinfoil, wires, and so many more fun things to add creativity to our switch. For my first switch, there is going to be a popsicle stick covered in tinfoil. This stick will be able to be pressed down so that when you press it down the stick touches the base which is also covered in tinfoil making the light work. The next one will turn on if you push it forward to touch another wall of tinfoil. The last one will be a literal on/off switch and will hopefully look like one too. We are still working on our switches, but I’m still excited to see what will become of mine.

In this week of technology, our main focus was shaping and soldering our jewelry piece to our design. The assignment was to create a jewelry piece to give to someone special. I chose to make my sister a pendant with a rising sun resting in between two mountains. The first step was to make the ring that the design would go in. This part was fairly easy, except for making the circle round and tight. After I completed this, I moved on to shaping the metal how I wanted it to look. We were only supposed to use 6 pieces of metal total, but I used 7. I found that making the sun was easy because it was only a half circle with lines as sunbeams. However, the mountains were very difficult to make and I had to try over and over again to make it perfect. When I finished shaping, I soldered. This part was the most fun and I finished it quickly. Then I gave the pendant to my sister and she loved it.

In technology class, we have been learning about laser, specifically the laser cutter. I had no idea that lasers had so much to do with atoms. One thing we learned was that the word laser was originally and acronym for light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation. During class we also studied how lasers work. It starts off with energy being applied to the electron, causing the electron to jump into a higher orbit. Then, when the electron is dropped back to its original orbit, it releases a particle called a photon. This particle is made of light which is what makes the laser. I think that the laser cutting machine is really interesting and I’m excited to create things for it to cut.