Low Voltage Through People

What animal should light up and beep?

  • frog

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • dog

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • gorilla

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • oh, grow up, woodja

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1
  • Poll closed .

Thread Starter

webmanoffesto

Joined Jun 6, 2014
7
How do I make one of those low voltage RubberDuck-Person1-Person2-RubberDuck circuits. The people hold hands and the rubber duck lights up. I've googled it but I'm not finding it. Maybe I don't know what to search on.

It doesn't have to be a rubber duck, but I saw that today at the Boston Museum of Science :)
 

Thread Starter

webmanoffesto

Joined Jun 6, 2014
7
Okay, I found some links, but not instructions on how to make one
https://sciencewithtoys.wikispaces.com/UFO ball
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/human-circuit
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/energy-stick.html

From Spangler's website:
How Does It Work? - So how does it work? We thought that you’d never ask. Don’t try to take the Energy Stick apart! It’s securely glued together and you will have to destroy it to open it. You can see the major parts through the clear body of the tube. The guts of the stick include a circuit board, two button batteries, an integrated circuit, three light emitting diodes (LED), a piezoelectric transducer, a transistor, and two electrodes.

  • The batteries are connected in series (head to toe) to form a small power supply. Each button battery (cell) supplies about direct current (DC) electricity. Since the cells are so small, they provide very little current (milliamps), and therefore, very little power (milliwatts). Three volts at low current is a level generally considered safe.
  • Inside there is a circuit board with an integrated circuit, or chip. It contains tiny transistors, resistors, diodes, and other electronic parts that produce the noises and the flash pulses.
  • The light emitting diodes (LEDs) are like small red, blue, and green lights, except that they have no filament. The lights are produced by brightly glowing junctions on semiconductor chips.
  • The piezoelectric transducer functions like a speaker – it’s what makes the noise. It consists of a very thin slice of quartz mounted on a brass disk. When electrical pulses are applied to the quartz, it vibrates, and that vibration is what we hear as sound.
  • Transistors are electronic switches. In this case, the integrated circuit provides the sound waves, but they’re not powerful enough to be heard by the transducer. So, the integrated circuit tells the more powerful transistor to turn on or off, and it controls the transducer.
  • Electrodes are simply the electrical conductors. They are the two metallic strips that you touch to complete the circuit.
 
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Thread Starter

webmanoffesto

Joined Jun 6, 2014
7
An interesting post I found:
Q: How do you get a person to complete a circuit with out electrocuting them?
A UFO ball is a ball that lights up and makes sound when you touch (with your hands) two metal contacts an the exterior of the sphere. It will light up if one person touches both contacts or 1000 people hold hands and the last to each touch a contact. I want to apply this to a 9 volt light bulb. I have a 9 volt battery an aligator clip to both the "+" and "-" ends. I then have the "+" aligator clip attached to a light bulb. when I touch the second aligator clip and the light bulb, the light bulb does not turn on. how do I get it to turn on step-by-step process with me completing the circuit, do I need to buy anything, what is the problem.
A: The resistance between your hands is probably about 100000 ohms (100K).
So if you put 9 volts across this, you will get 90 microamps current.
9V divided by 100K is 0.000090 Amps or 90 microamps. (Ohms Law)
- Your light bulb is likely to need about 100 mA to light up so you don't have enough current to light the bulb.
- You need to amplify the current to get the light bulb to light up.
You may get a partial lighting of the bulb if you use a single high gain transistor (such as a BC548) and use the resistance between your hands as the bias resistor for the transistor. Use the transistor to turn on the light bulb.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090302174817AA60Eu7
 
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