Stimulating Connections
We’ve attended a wide variety of technician meetings and conferences this year, and one new product range attracted attention wherever we went was the Electric Paint, Touch Board, and Activity Packs from Bare Conductive®. Whether for a STEM club project, or for teaching electrical circuits in the classroom, the Bare Conductive® range lets teachers put aside the leads and lamps and get students’ imaginations racing. In a similar way to replacing wires with conductive putty in resistivity practicals, these materials can help make the fundamentals of circuitry and electronics engaging, fun and memorable.
Conductive paints or putties are not a new premise, however, their use as inspiring educational tools is on the increase thanks to the growing number of resources now available. Whether students design their own or use the exciting designs in the Flashing Card Sets, the non-toxic Electric Paintcan be used to bring traditional circuit diagrams to life with the help of LEDs and other components. It can also be used as cold solder in electronics or as a conductive adhesive, for example in combination with Electro Fashion Conductive Thread to create fantastic e-textiles. It can even be used to make conductive putty!
Students can take things a step further by incorporating the Touch Board to transform Electric Paint sensor data into any output, such as sound, light, movement or data in the cloud. This allows them to create everything from capacitance or distance sensors on any surface, to MIDI interfaces, to touch-triggered sound board posters including any sounds they can think of. The Touch Board comes pre-programmed to trigger MP3 sound files so no coding is required for students to get stuck in and start their projects.
There are a wide variety of workshop, project and lesson ideas both online and in the teaching guides for this range, giving a helping hand to anyone wanting to explore these inspiring resources. If you are interested in any further information about our Bare Conductive® or smart materials range, please contact the technical team [via techsupport@philipharris.co.uk] for further information. Happy painting!
