Home / Series / The Learning Circuit / Aired Order / Season 1 / Episode 3

Wigglebots

To build your own Wigglebot, all you need is a battery and a motor. Karen pulls out some DC motors that she's taken out of some common objects. She's pulled a DC motor out of a cheap electric toothbrush that she found at the dollar store, some motors from video game controllers lying around the shop, a motor from a cell phone, and a computer fan. The computer fan won’t work as is, they’ll need to break some of the fan blades off so that it’s off balance. Vibrating motors work like DC motors, but a weight is placed on the end causing it to vibrate when it spins. Once you've found your motor, make sure that your battery has enough voltage to make it run. A lot of motors have an optimal rating, but a lot of times you can use a different voltage, such as a 9 volt battery to run a 12 volt fan. When you are connecting your motor to your battery pack, make sure your ends are long and stripped. Once your wires are twisted together be sure to cover it in electrical tape. This will keep it together and help prevent red wires from touching black wires. You don't want the red wires touching the black wires because that will cause a short and make it not work. You can then decorate your Wigglebot using stuff around the house such as pipe cleaners, pom-pom balls, popsicle sticks, paper clips, and googly eyes. You can even use electrical parts like old resistors, whatever you have lying around the house. For kids looking to do more, kick it up a notch by adding a capacitor. Both capacitors and batteries store electrical energy but work in completely different ways. Batteries have two terminals, chemical reaction inside the batteries produce electrons on one terminal and absorb electrons on the other terminal. Capacitors cannot produce electrons, they can only store them. Capacitors usually have two ratings, voltage and something called farads, a unit of measurement of capacitance. For this project, select a capacitor that is rated for approximately the voltage you'll be usin

English
  • Originally Aired December 20, 2017
  • Network element14
  • Created June 7, 2018 by
    Administrator admin
  • Modified June 7, 2018 by
    Administrator admin