Always wanted to create a light-up poster or t-shirt without worrying about all those messy and bulky wires? Now you can, thanks to an ingenious conductive paint that allows you to design and illuminate your creations, simultaneously!
Called Bare Paint, it is the brainchild of a group of students from London's Royal College of Art, who started working on this fun project in 2009. While their initial idea was to create something that could be painted onto the human body, the team of designers comprising of four graduate students Isabel Lizardi, Matt Johnson, Bibi Nelson and Becky Pilditc, instead settled upon a product that would be less intrusive and therefore appeal to a larger audience!
Since none of them had a background in chemistry, they began by researching the Internet to learn how to create a liquid conductive material, which as it turns out was not too difficult because similar material has been created before. What has not been done however, is making it available to the masses that want to have fun experimenting with electrical projects without dealing with bulky wires! What makes the non-toxic paint even more amazing is that it can be applied to almost any surface - From paper to plastic, metal and even, fabric.
Bare Paint, which runs just like thick paint, but dries and becomes conductive as soon as it comes in contact with air, is now available in jars and also pens that work just like glitter glue pens. Not surprisingly, the two products that retail at about $28 USD for the paint and $9.95 USD for the pen and are available online, as well as, at stores like RadioShack, are already being used to create all kinds of fun projects ranging from interactive color wheels to homemade electric toys.
Building or should we say drawing that electric circuit for school suddenly became more interesting, didn't it? For some fun ideas check out the company's website for some step-by-step tutorials.
Resources: sentinelsource.com, edition.cnn.com