Magic Elixir (LED Lighting Effect)

by scvilies in Circuits > LEDs

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Magic Elixir (LED Lighting Effect)

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Safety first
:
The safety aspect of this DIY lighting idea is entirely relying upon the low output of the cell phone charger (or a pair of AA batteries). Under normal situations, the low output of cell phone charger (or a pair of AA batteries) will not hurt you. But please make sure read through the instruction and are comfortable with it before proceed, because we are playing with both electricity AND water together.

Requirement:

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One 1 Watt LED chip. Pick whatever color you like, mine was green
One cellphone charger, or a pair of AA batteries
One aluminum bowl
Water

The 1 Watt LED chip can be easily had from eBay.

The cellphone charger was for an old Nokia cellphone i no longer use. The output was 5.7V 800mA, it was actually a little bit too high for this “high power LED chip”, but nevertheless, it was handy for me. If you don’t want to destroy a cellphone charger, stacking 2 AA batteries together can also work. I have also used a fold back clip to secure the wire, but it is not necessary.

The aluminum bowl and water are there to create the cool lighting effect. The reflectivity of aluminum surface goes really well with water to create what looks like a “bowl of elixir”.

Instruction:

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1. Remove the tip of cellphone charger to expose the black and red wire.
2. Connect the wire from the LED chip to charger, black to black, red to red.
3. Put the LED chip into the aluminum bowl, face down
4. Add water to the bowl
5. Plug the charger into the power outlet.

Cautions:

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1. Do not connect the black and red wire from the charger directly.
2. Make sure the output of the charger is not too high, otherwise you run the risk of ELECTROCUTION. Anything less than 6v should be ok.
3. You may want to wear a pair of sunglasses, because the LED chip can be too bright to look into directly.