Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Electrifying our dollhouse

About two weeks ago, Papa, Grace, and I decided to electrify our dollhouse. In only a few days, all the supplies that were needed were bought and in the garage. These were: 4 LED lights, 4 switches, wire, and soldering equipment. The morning after the supplies were bought, we carried the dollhouse to the garage and got to work.

First we soldered the switches and then wired up the house using parallel circuits.

But that was not the end... Grace and I were ecstatic, so we switched on and off the switches. But some of the lights refused to turn on. "What do we do?" Grace and I frantically asked. Papa said that first we had to figure out if the lights or the switches were wrong. We untwisted the wires and took the switches off. Then, we touched the wires together and the lights still didn't turn on. Two lights were wired backwards (we hadn't realized they were one-directional).

Still confident, our team continued. We rewired our lights and prayed that it might work this time. We thought we had finally done it correctly, but when I pushed the switch it only turned on for a second--or as long as I pushed it.

So the next day, Papa bought new switches that looked real, but were mini. Triumphant again, we soldered all the connections, sawed holes for the new switches, and then glue-gunned them into place.  Thinking it would work, Papa tried to turn on the lights using the switches.  But the switches would not budge.  The hot glue must have glued the switch in place!  We scraped off the glue and nailed the new switches instead.  Finally it worked and the house was done!

Sophia

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