Ever wonder why you can’t just take a cucumber with you on a hike and use it to light up your path after it gets dark?
No?
Is it because cucumbers don’t light up?
If that’s the only reason you didn’t ever have this thought before, you’re in luck! Introducing, the PowerPickle:
Ok, yeah, the casing needs some work and yeah, that green light probably won’t light up much, and yeah, once you take a bite of your cucumber, the circuits will fall out and yeah, it’s going to dry up and maybe rot pretty quickly. But… let’s not dwell on the negatives, let’s talk about how this got built!
I knew what I wanted to make: a vegetable (any kind) that had a switch to turn it on and shine some light out of the top. Beyond that, all I knew is that I needed a battery, some wires, a lightbulb, and some kind of switch to embed into the vegetable. I looked up “electronics store” on Google Maps and saw that the Tinkersphere was nearby. Walking in, I knew that this place would probably become a regular visit. Good thing it’s right next to one of my favorite ramen places, https://mrtakaramen.webs.com/.
Once I got the parts, I headed into the ITP studio and set up my circuit. I didn’t initially realize that a switch just conveyed positive charge, so I spent a few cycles sending smoke into the air while essentially shorting the circuit. After some googling, however, I realized how simple this circuit is.
I got the light to turn on with just the batteries and switch. Then, I went to Whole Foods, bought a few kinds of cucumbers and zucchinis of different sizes— both vegetables that would be big enough to hold the electronics and easy enough to hollow. When I got home, I started carving the cucumber.
The circuit stopped working when I initially put it inside the cucumber. After a little testing, it became clear that the problem was with the contacts— I needed my wiring to more solidly and consistently make contact with the lightbulb, switch and batteries. I taped everything up, which did the trick. Then, I crammed the circuit into the cucumber— in the future, this could have been done a bit more elegantly as well, probably with just a bit of tape. This time around, I just wanted to get the PowerPickle to work!
It did work, although the enclosure for the switch started to widen as I fiddled with it. At the end of this experiment, I tried using toothpicks to fasten the top of the cucumber/head of the flashlight back to the body, which sort of worked, but would probably loosen quickly. Another area to improve upon.
Author’s note: I cut my fingernails immediately after seeing the picture above^