Did you know that certain household items can be converted into a semiconductor? Take dough, for instance. If you make one, you can turn it into a conductor or an insulator – depending on how you create it. You can use it to create your very own dough circuit!
How to turn a dough into a conductor?
You will need the following materials to create a conductive dough:
- 1 cup water
- 1 ½ cups flour
- ¼ cup salt
- 2 tbsp cream of tartar
- 1 tbsp oil (preferably vegetable oil)
Here’s what you do:
- Mix all the ingredients together in a pot.
- Cook it over medium heat while stirring continuously. You will notice that the mixture will start to look chunky as it boils.
- Stir the mixture until it can be formed into a ball. When this happens, remove it from the pot.
- Place the ball of dough on a lightly floured surface. Take extra care in handling it straight from the pot as it will be very hot.
- Knead the flour into the ball until it is the right consistency.
- Place it in an airtight container or plastic bag. While in the container, the water that is in the dough will create condensation. Just knead it to get it back in the right consistency.
How to turn a dough into an insulator?
You will need the following materials to create insulating dough:
- 1 ½ cup flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 3 tbsp oil (preferably vegetable oil)
- 1 tsp granulated aluminum (to help preserve the dough)
- ½ cup deionized water (if the dough is intended to be eaten later on, use distilled water)
Here’s what you do:
- Mix the solid ingredients, except for ½ cup of flour, in a large bowl .
- Add 1 tbsp of water to the mixture and stir.
- Add the water into the mixture 1 tbsp at a time until majority of the water is absorbed.
- Knead the mixture into a lump. If the dough does not have a sticky texture, add more water (small amounts at a time).
- Knead the remaining ½ flour into the dough.
- Place in an airtight container or plastic bag. While in the container, expect some condensation from the water in the dough.
How to make a complete circuit
Now that you have both conductive and insulating dough, you can create a circuit. Take note that you can use food coloring to distinguish the conductive from the insulating dough.
What you will need:
- 9V battery or any power source that has a current value of less than .5A
- Battery connector complete with spades or probes at the end of the wire
- Conductive dough
- Insulating dough
- Multimeter
- LED bulbs
What you need to do:
- Place the battery in the battery connector. Be careful not to touch the battery contacts and the ends of the wire, to avoid a short.
- Get a conductive piece of dough (about the size of a fist) and divide it into two pieces. Each piece should be rolled into cylinders that are no thinner than 1 inch.
- Get the insulating dough and do the same, but it should be a slightly thicker cylinder than the conductive cylinders.
- Arrange the dough so the insulating cylinder is between the two conductive cylinders.
- Push one of the battery contacts into one of the conductive cylinders and the other contact into the other cylinder. Be careful not to let the two conductive pieces of dough touch each other to avoid a short. This arrangement will result in one cylinder having a power connected to it while the other has ground connected to it.
- Take one LED bulb and connect one wire to one conductive cylinder and the other into the second conductive cylinder.
- Get a multimeter and measure voltage, current and resistance if the dough is made longer, shorter, thinner or thicker.
Please check out more posts on experiments with batteries!
