Introduction: E-chopsticks

By www.contrechoc.com
About: Happiness is invisible? Then you cannot sell it? You cannot copy it nor like it:-) You have to arrive there yourself??? But i am just a consumer! See Baudrillard, La societe de consommation, p60....

This is an instructables for my friends who were afraid of using chopsticks...

These chopsticks allows you to practice secretly at home.

Besides this very practical reason it is fun to play with - and fun to make!

What is the secret of the two LED's? There is no electronics in my chopsticks!

Step 1: Materials

Chopsticks - i used the wooden chopsticks, for one time use.

Koper adhesive foil

Some electric wire

2 LED's

a 3V coin cell battery

Soldering station

Step 2: Making: Preparing Chopsticks

1. Preparing the chopstick

Seperate the chopsticks.

Cut thin strips of adhesive foil at the length of the chopstick.

Paste, glue, press the copper foil on the chopstick, from the tip to the top.

And for the tip of the chopstick: fold the copper around it.

Where you have copper foil over other copper foil: solder the connection between the two layers of copper.


Step 3: Making: Connecting LED's

2. LED's
The LED has two legs, long and shorter. I made the top of the chopstick fit the width between the legs, so the legs are at two sides. Cut some electric wire (as flexible as you can get it), at 5-10 cm length, 2 times. Solder the wires: short to long leg, and long to short leg. 3. You can make, crochet, knit a textile tube around the wires. Finished!

The explanation is basic - but funny: the LED is a diode and the LED's are opposite
in direction, so with the battery in either position, there will always be one LED having the right direction and not the other. See the circuit sketch.

Step 4: Training Your Chopsticks Acrobatics.

With the coin cell batteries between the tips, one LED should be shining, reverse the battery and the other LED shines...

There are smaller 3V coin cell batteries for training picking up the tiniest kind of objects.

Better not use these copper chopsticks for eating!

Step 5: Dutch Sushi

If you have practiced, you can start eating your own sushi inventions!

With "normal" chopsticks of course.

I liked sushi with duck. Or just wrap a potato in yaki sushi nori...

some soy sauce, tiny bit of wasabi.....