Hi All. I'll start of by saying hello. First post here. I have the tiniest idea about what I'm doing with electronics. I can cut wire and solder it to a battery but that's about it. I thought I'd do a bit of a search online to see If I can work out a few things and here I am. I'm hoping that this is the right place to ask.
I work as a teacher (Design&Tech) and am trying to develop a new project for my year 8 students. I tend to focus on timber and metal but I'm trying to broaden my knowledge a bit. The idea I came across was a LED and acrylic sign.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/omPt6U_8ws8/maxresdefault.jpg.
There are 100 students to take through this project so I'm trying to find a balance between cost effective, a certain degree of challenge and having a final product that looks good and they're proud to take home.
My first prototype was to get a AA battery case with switch and use that as the power source. It lights up the strip well and I've had it going for about 15hours so far. The problems I've found with this method are a chunky battery case and it would be difficult to secure the case and change the batteries when needed.
My next idea was to use a AAA case with another switch. It's smaller and lights up the lights. A few more parts to solder but I think this is a winner in terms of the size of the battery pack.
I suppose my questions would be along the lines of: Does this seem on the right track? How would you go about creating this simple circuit? Any comments would be welcome.
Sorry about the long post. I've got a lot to learn.