Paper Circuits

Creating circuit art with simple components: paper, wire, battery, LEDs

Time: 45-75 minutes

Summary:

Make a fun, simple circuit, by making light-up card!

You’ll use a battery, an LED light, and some wire or copper tape for the circuit, and decorate a card so that it has an illustration that incorporates your LED light!

Builds on:

Basic knowledge of circuits and positive/negative sides of electrical components

Goals:

Students will explore and understand:

  • the importance of electric connections being tight and not loose
  • the direction electricity travels in circuits
  • that diodes (such as LEDs) only allow electricity to go through them one way and not the other

Tools:

  • scissors (for cutting paper, copper tape, or wires)
  • wire stripper (if using regular wires)
  • a way of poking holes in paper, such as pushpins, metal forks or pens with a thin metal tip

Supplies:

(see “Where to find supplies” below)

  • coin cell batteries (one for each student)
  • LEDs (at least one for each student; multicolor packs work well)
  • cardstock (or construction paper, but firmer cardstock works best)
  • markers/pens
  • wire, which can be:
    • conductive tape, OR
    • insulated (plastic-coated) wire

: mention need to have wires touch front and back of tape

  • intro: show an led… what is it stand for put it on coin cell one way and other… only lights up one way short leg, long leg fold legs down wrap a wire aound each show still lights

    • make simple circuit on paper together
    • Draw lines for wires before taping
    • Draw where is +, - on LED, battery
    • show loose and firm connections, result of that
    • Help fold the corners and trace the circles

  • make valentine card circuit

    • reuse battery

Recap:

We made a circuit on paper together using a coin battery, LED lights, and copper tape, being careful to keep track of which direction the electricity would flow through the circuit. Then we made our own light-up Valentine’s Day cards! We noticed that the LED wires had to be really well connected to the copper tape for the circuit to work, and we even saw an example of how a short circuit let the electricity take a shortcut to the positive side of the battery without having to light up the LEDs.