Ken Denmead, editor of the GeekDad blog, and author of the book Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share, posted one of our favorite projects from the book, Electronic Origami, on the Make: Projects platform. It’s a starter origami project where you build a simple paper box with a built-in LED circuit, drawn with a conductive ink pen.
This would be a fun MAKEcation project to do with your kids. If you do any electronic origami, inspired by this, please tell us about it/link to photos in the comments below or in the project notes of Make: Projects.
The project started with the musical question:
How can we make origami even geekier?
I was browsing the aisles at my local electronics warehouse one day, looking at parts and pieces, and I noticed a very interesting item called a CircuitWriter pen. If you remember those glitter pens that everyone loved to use in junior high school, this is the same idea. But the material is actually silver, in a suspension of acetone, resin, and a few other chemicals with big names. The idea is that you can use it to draw basic electrical circuits or fix broken traces without having to etch or solder; the pen’s ink works just like the thin conductive material on a circuit board, and will conduct electricity.
And that got me to thinking: what else could you draw on to make a circuit? What about paper? Could you draw a circuit on paper, and say, run an LED from a battery? And, if you could do that, what could you then do with the paper? All of which led me to this project.
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