Aboutcleggsan Expertise All technical areas of Electronics Engineering.
Experience BSEE, MBA, Design, R&D, University Research.
Senior Life Member of IEEE. Life Fellow of AES.
Organizations IEEE, Consumer Electronics Society, Audio Engineering Society.
Broad teaching experience; work experience mostly in consumer electronics and conversion from analog to digital technologies. Pioneer in digital audio at all levels.
Question Hi, My daughter and I worked on a science project from school where one connected batteries via wires to a small lightbulb, that, when all was connected correctly, lit up.
There was a question at the end of the assignment -- "Can you get the lightbulb to blink?" We tried everything we could think, using just the two batteries and two wires and the bulb, but couldn't get it to blink. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks a lot ! (We live in Sweden and the school uses a wonderful set of science teaching materials where the children do little experiments and solve puzzles each week!)
Rebecca and Clara
Answer It can be done easily if you are allowed to use a christmas tree blinking bulb or something like that.
With just the two wires it can be done if the two wires are from different materials. If the two ends of the connecting wires were just barely touching each other and mounted over the top of the bulb such that the heat caused the temperature of the two wires to rise it could be configured such that when the light is on it heats up the touching wires and one of the wires would bend from the temperature rise more quickly than the other causing the contact to break. Then, as the touching wires separated the light would go out, the wires would cool down and come back in contact with each other and start the sequence over again.
There may be other methods that are more sophisticated, but the above is the one that comes to my mind easily.
