They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and our group’s switch embodies that idea. We had an excellent idea where we’d draw a schematic of our switch with a conductive pencil, then have that schematic connect the wires to make the LED turn on. Unfortunately, we lost the pencil we were going to use, so we had to improvise. Luckily for us, we had the perfect substitute: a banana.

Our switch works as follows: We have the battery, connected to a resistor, connected to one set of diode that we poked through a notebook, unconnected to the next set, which is also poked through said notebook, which is plugged into a breadboard, which is connected to an LED, which is then connected back to ground. Then, we place the banana on top of the two diodes, which completes the circuit and lights up the LED. Then, to turn off the LED, you simply pick up the banana.

While our switch might not have been what we initially planned, I think we did well. We might have slipped on a metaphorical banana peel when we lost the pencil, but luckily all we needed was that banana.