LED CHUTIES Come to Maker Faire

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LED CHUTIES Come to Maker Faire
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Paul Gentile and Lee Siegel of Soldering Sunday have developed a fun way to take the pyrotechnics out of fireworks using LEDs and homemade air rockets. An unplanned side project from this effort was the LED CHUTIE.

We had the formula for our first LED Firework, a soda-bottle water powered rocket loaded with LED parachutes. Then something happened – it rained. We were stuck indoors and we needed to test some new parachute designs. At that moment we realized that at Maker Faire we would be indoors as well. Even if we were outdoors, launching LEDs in the day would not be that spectacular. On a lark we tossed one of the LED chutes over a fan in my living room. We watched as the LED chute flipped around then shot up, hit the ceiling, came down, and then went back up again. We found ourselves playing with the LED over fan for the next half hour.

Read more about LED fireworks and LED CHUTIES on the Soldering Sunday blog.

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Andrew Terranova is an electrical engineer, writer and author of How Things Are Made: From Automobiles to Zippers. Andrew is also an electronics and robotics enthusiast and has created and curated robotics exhibits for the Children's Museum of Somerset County, NJ and taught robotics classes for the Kaleidoscope Enrichment in Blairstown, NJ and for a public primary school. Andrew is always looking for ways to engage makers and educators.

View more articles by Andrew Terranova

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