Last Sunday we hosted the Squeezable Circuits workshop that we had been preparing for in the Learning Studio at the Exploratorium. Everybody had mixed reaction as to "how it went", so here's my first attempt to summarize and synthesize the day's events. We had decided to focus on taking apart and re-purposing toys, as during the development stage that seemed to be the activity that was the most engaging and "tinkering" of the ones we tried.

For our next homemade, movable toy; we harness the power of wind. Fans, hairdryers, even a gust from dropping a wooden board made it into our experiments. Two methods really took for long term experimentation: setting a powerful blower under a board with holes for a air hockey-like table, and constructing a large tube to sit on an upright facing fan. We would insert various objects underneath the tube to blow up, or drop them from above (If the object had some weight).

Mike, Karen, Luigi and I (Christina) first spent some time in the studio reviewing basic circuitry. We used alligator clips to connect a battery pack to tin foil and some sort of light or sound. Now the question became; what creative way can we make the tin foil connect, particularly in a squeezable fashion?