What is a Short Circuit

Have you heard someone say their brain is "short circuiting." This usually means their brain has too much information and is going into meltdown mode.

This phrase comes from an electrical short circuit. Short circuits occur when two parts of a circuit touch that shouldn’t come into contact with one other. This is because electrons are “lazy” and will always take the path of least resistance to complete the circuit. This can be dangerous in circuits and create ‘meltdowns’. Lucky for us, they are safe with Squishy Circuits and we can demonstrate them easily.

Remember when we created our Simple Circuit, we left air in-between the two dough snakes? If we would allow those two pieces of dough to touch, the electrons would have simply gone from one piece of dough to the other without going through the LED! You can go ahead and try it and you’ll notice the LED will go out or dim since most of the electrons are bypassing the LED.

To prevent short circuits, we can leave the air gap (air is an insulator). Or, use the white insulating dough to prevent the conductive dough pieces from touching. This is especially helpful when we create more advanced dough shapes.

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