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I am building a model house and need help with lighting?

For Architecture class I am building a model of the house I designed. I am planning on including lighting. What is the best way to go about doing this? In elementary school we cut up a strand of christmas lights and connected them to a 6v battery to light up a little shoebox house. Will this work for me or is there a more efficient way to go about this? Any suggestions are welcome, Thanks

Public Comments

1. That should work, you can also try LED's that you can get from radioshack. Just make sure you have enough voltage depending on how many lights/LED's you link up.
2. Well, first you need to determine the type of lighting that you'll be using. If you want a ceiling fixture, then I would use LED lights and create a fixture to overlay it using plasticard. This would be more effective than the christmas lights because it would be brighter and not as pointed. If you want track lighting, then I would actually recommend the christmas lights (the tiny rounded bulbs) and create a track out of cordwood. If you're doing a sort of fluorescent lighting, then you could make a casing out of plasticard again and use the long cylindrical christmas lights for the illumination. Or are you going to be moving into that much detail?
3. I worked on a similar project for a physics class some time back. I used christmas lights, but not as a chain, rather individually (I'd snip the wires around the bulb). It worked nicely because even if you mess up, you have many more bulbs to use. In this scenario, a 6V battery worked great. If you really want to get creative, you can buy some simple toggle or push-button switches from Radio Shack and make light switches, and if you're interested, read up on circuits and experiment a bit on connections. It can be quite a fun project!