Re: Good uses for junk

[Steve Luzader <sluzader@fre.fsu.umd.edu>]

> At the 1 hour photo developing place they recycle the disposable cameras.
> Even the one's with charge units. They will also give me any of them that I
> ask for. The disposable cameras run off a 1.5 volt battery, contain a photo
> capacitor rated at 400 volts. I charged one while measuring the voltage
> across the capacitor's leads. It went up to 290 volts when the ready neon
> bulb began to flash.
>
>         So here's the question. This stuff is too good to pass up. Any
> lab/demo ideas that these parts, in pieces or in toto, could be used for?
> -tony
>
> _____________________________________________________________________
> Tony Wayne                              Those that can, do.
> wayne@pen.k12.va.us                     Those that understand, teach.
    This reply shows how far behind I am with everything, but I thought
I'd send something anyway.  I noticed boxes of film cannisters and
disposable cameras at the film processor I go to, so I asked if I could
have some.  I went away with bags full of cameras, etc.  (The owner
takes most of the batteries out of the disposables with flash and saves
them for panicky customers who come in desperately in search of a
battery, but a few of the flash cameras still had their batteries.)  I
used the film cannisters to make small containers for use in lab, such
as in one of the heat flow experiments in "Tools for Scientific
Thinking".  I did an optics experiment in my intro course where I gave
each group of students one of the cameras and just told them to find the
focal length of the lens.  They seemed to enjoy taking the cameras apart
to get the lens out, and some of them even put the camera back together
again.  Next year in electronics I'm planning on giving students the
cameras and asking them to figure out how the flash works.
 
Steve Luzader
Frostburg State University