West Florida Components

Just in time for graduation, Apple has announced a super deal:

Buy a Mac and get a free iPod touch

Pretty cool! Here’s how it works: If you buy a new Mac with Apple education pricing from May 25 through September 7, 2010, you can get a free 8GB iPod touch. That’s a value of $199! The $199 is in the form of a rebate which is processed online, and if it’s like other Apple online promos, it’s pretty painless and fast.

Want a bigger iPod touch? No problem. You can get the 32GB iTouch for $100 after rebate or the 64GB model for $200 after rebate.

Right now they have some other good deals going on including a rebate of up to $100 for qualifying printers, and as always, they offer to help recycle your old PC or Mac, sometimes giving you some $$ if your old computers qualify to be reused.

One other thing to keep in mind… Apple offers an educational discount for students and teachers….so current pricing on the site shows that the Mac’s are also discounted a little bit – starting at a $50 discount on the basic MacBook. Great deal all around!

What better way to illustrate how to build a basic electronic connection than to use coins to build a battery?

Here’s what you need:

quarters or dimes
aluminum foil
blotter paper (see below)
salt
cider vinegar
wire (short length of both black and red wire – ~16 gauge)
1 LED (any through hole LED)
scissors
pen or marker
voltmeter (optional)

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Trace the coins on the aluminum foil and blotter paper. Cut out 10 of each so that you have 10 circles of aluminum foil and 10 circles of blotter paper.

(Blotter paper can be found in the art store or the art section of your local craft store. You can also find blotter paper in the cosmetics department. If you can’t locate blotter paper, then you can also try using thick paper towels.)

Mix a small amount (1/4 cup) of vinegar with some salt. Stir the salt until dissolved. If the salt can not dissolve, then you’ve added too much. Add some additional vinegar and stir. Soak the circles of blotter paper in the vinegar and salt mixture.

Stack the foil, blotter paper and coins as shown in the video. It is important that the foil not touch the other layers. Let the ‘battery’ stand for about 15 minutes to develop a charge.

Connect each lead of the LED to a short piece of wire; the black wire connects to the negative lead and the red wire is attached to the positive lead on the LED. Place the exposed end of negative wire on the bottom of the ‘battery’ touching the foil, and the end of the positive wire to the quarter on top of the stack.

Optional: Use the voltmeter to measure how many volts are generated by the battery. A battery with 6 or more cells should be able to light up a standard LED with no problem!

In honor of PAC-MAN’s 30th Anniversary, we present a great electronics project.

Is “Big” your favorite movie? Are you saving your money to buy a WII? If you answered ‘yes’ to both of these questions, then you should check out this video project: How To Build a Giant Floor Mat Nintendo Controller.

The best thing about this project is that it’s super easy and requires very few electronic components, parts and supplies. If you’ve done some electronics projects recently, you may have everything you need already at home! OK, so maybe you might need to go buy the felt….but other than that, you’ve probably got everything on hand to make a floor mat Nintendo controller.

Here’s what you need:

A Nintendo game system and controller

Materials required:

3-feet by 5-feet piece of cardboard
40 feet of insulated red wire
6 feet of insulated black wire
Aluminum foil
Packing tape
32 sheets of construction paper
2 yards of gray felt
1/2 yard of red felt
1/2 yard of black felt

Tools required:
soldering gun
screwdriver
scissors

View the video to see all the steps: