a brief case sized clock? perfect for the international airline traveler
Im sure the outcome wouldn't of been much different there as in Texas public school.
Im sure the outcome wouldn't of been much different there as in Texas public school.
Yes, I was most disappointed to hear of his plight. Bright kid, doing what he loves. Not surprised, mind. Maybe a bit teed off at the teacher for not recognising it for what it was.
This thread has no link to the story, which got my attention enough to find it via Google.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/u...-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?_r=0
No arrest, but my 7th grade science fair project was deemed unsafe, but allowed to remain in the display, unpowered.
The science fair project I and several other students created for the 11th grade science fair did however get banned, and also got us banned from next years fair. It was a 6 foot tall Tesla coil based on the "Big TC" plans published in the July 1964 edition of Popular Electronics magazine. Upscaled
"Tubelab style" of course.
It was a class project, and was actually built IN the electronics lab on the school grounds. We had the magazine in hand, but that thing made all the teachers run and hide when we plugged it in.
The electronics teacher reached an agreement with the fair organizers to put a plastic box around the spark gap, which unfortunately melted dripping into the arc creating a small fire and a big stink.....banned from the fair forever.
The TC however remained in the electronics lab for several years after I had left the school. I don't think anyone ever dared to plug it in. Picture of the original is on the front of the magazine, ours was 2 foot taller.
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/60s/64/Pop-1964-07.pdf
About 25 years later my daughter's 8th grade science fair project (titled Foods That Go Boom) won the local school fair, placed high enough in the county science fair to be invited to the state fair where it was disallowed for being unsafe. It seems that blowing the door off a microwave oven (under controlled conditions of course) by nuking a carton of eggs to explain supercritical fluids is not safe!
That project began due to an accidental discovery when we were making fudge and I threw some cold chocolate chips into a boiling mixture of butter and sugar. It exploded, fortunately missing both of us.
Cops, bomb threats, and evacuation of the entire school......that happened in 12th grade......Mischievous prank that got out of hand. No arrests were made though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/u...-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?_r=0
No arrest, but my 7th grade science fair project was deemed unsafe, but allowed to remain in the display, unpowered.
The science fair project I and several other students created for the 11th grade science fair did however get banned, and also got us banned from next years fair. It was a 6 foot tall Tesla coil based on the "Big TC" plans published in the July 1964 edition of Popular Electronics magazine. Upscaled
"Tubelab style" of course.
It was a class project, and was actually built IN the electronics lab on the school grounds. We had the magazine in hand, but that thing made all the teachers run and hide when we plugged it in.
The electronics teacher reached an agreement with the fair organizers to put a plastic box around the spark gap, which unfortunately melted dripping into the arc creating a small fire and a big stink.....banned from the fair forever.
The TC however remained in the electronics lab for several years after I had left the school. I don't think anyone ever dared to plug it in. Picture of the original is on the front of the magazine, ours was 2 foot taller.
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/60s/64/Pop-1964-07.pdf
About 25 years later my daughter's 8th grade science fair project (titled Foods That Go Boom) won the local school fair, placed high enough in the county science fair to be invited to the state fair where it was disallowed for being unsafe. It seems that blowing the door off a microwave oven (under controlled conditions of course) by nuking a carton of eggs to explain supercritical fluids is not safe!
That project began due to an accidental discovery when we were making fudge and I threw some cold chocolate chips into a boiling mixture of butter and sugar. It exploded, fortunately missing both of us.
Cops, bomb threats, and evacuation of the entire school......that happened in 12th grade......Mischievous prank that got out of hand. No arrests were made though.
Hats off to you George.. It's refreshing to remember that a respected magazine would do something like present an EHT project to school kids in good faith. As they say, it only takes a couple of rotten eggs to spoil the microwave 😀
And thanks for the link, I enjoyed reading that magazine. It reminds me of the equivalent here. I can see that you guys were just as enthusiastic about these things.
And thanks for the link, I enjoyed reading that magazine. It reminds me of the equivalent here. I can see that you guys were just as enthusiastic about these things.
In the 60's and 70's there were three great DIY electronics magazines, Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, and Electronics Illustrated. There were a few others that were less DIY, and more general information with some DIY stuff. There were two or three magazines devoted entirely to ham radio as well, 73 and QST come to mind, but I think there was another one (edit..it was CQ), as well as all the ARRL publications and yearly handbooks. A good deal of my early electronics knowledge came from these magazines.
I went to a technical high school where I was enrolled in a 3 year long, 3 hours per day, electronics program. The original teacher had retired the same year I started in the program (1967) and the replacement had never taught high school before. He ran a training class in the Army for a year or two. The purpose of the program was to train TV repair techs, but the teacher had never fixed a TV before. There were other "vocational" programs in that school too, auto shop, sheet metal, machine shop, HVAC, commercial art, and cosmetology (female only in the 60's).
Most of the "lab equipment" that we had was old junk, donations from local businesses and the Air Force base nearby.....there were tubes, lots of tubes......where do you think I learned how to melt them?
The teacher was receptive to new ideas in teaching, and a few of us would propose group or class projects, or I would teach TV repair. I learned that by doing as a kid. The most popular class project was a HiFi or guitar amp, but there were a few ham radio devices too. Most of the designs came out of one of the magazines
Sadly these programs have been killed off due to budget and liability reasons. I last visited my old school in the late 70's and the auto shop was the only remaining vocational program.
It's sad to see how a kid's technical interest was rewarded by poor thinking, but in this day, it is easy to see how it happened, and will happen again. The teacher that panicked and called the cops would have probably have acted differently if she had ANY technical knowledge at all......"Oh, what's that, can you tell (or show) us all how it works." How the kid responded to that question would have revealed if there was any real threat.
They couldn't have been too concerned as no bomb squad was called and the school was never evacuated.
The ISF in Ft. Worth TX in 1969 was flooded with TCs, big ones! They would not allow any of them to power up, they would also not let LASERs operate for appropriate reasons.
Those big TCs could disrupt a lot of electronics today.
The ISF in Ft. Worth TX in 1969 was flooded with TCs, big ones! They would not allow any of them to power up, they would also not let LASERs operate for appropriate reasons.
Those big TCs could disrupt a lot of electronics today.
Mine killed VHF TV and AM radio reception for about 3 blocks when it was powered up. It made a wicked sound come out of the school PA system too.
If that's the big spinning wheel with brushes on either side, we had one too. It didn't work too well in the Florida humidity, neither did a Van De Graaf generator, although it would make a spark. Our school did not get air conditioning until several years after I graduated.
The electronics lab did have AC since sweaty kids, GROUNDED metal workbenches (stoopid!), with hot chassis tube radios and TV sets to play with, were not exactly good safety practice.
Hey Ahmed, you didn't build that!
Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves. | Tech Voice
Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves. | Tech Voice
If it's a kid tearing apart a clock and learning something about the subsystems, then repackaging it, cool. That's good stuff (we've all got to start somewhere!).
If it's a hoax. That sucks.
If it's a hoax. That sucks.
The forum No Politics rule is absolute. I have removed several posts and am not amused that this has made work for me. It is not a good idea to make work for me.Hopefully not a political comment - aren't geeks and nerds like this youngster exactly the kind of raw resource that our technological industries and aerospace programs rely on?
I kinda think that international media coverage was not on his mind
I kinda think that international media coverage was not on his mind
Could be. I will continue to maintain a distinction between hardware geek and hardware plagiarist.
Did you ever "design" something by cut and pasting two things together when you were say 14? I "designed" guitar amps by sticking whatever tubes I could find in the trash (often TV sweep tubes) into a Fender Champ schematic at that age, or maybe a bit younger. You can't get tubes and transformers in the trash any more, but a 30 year old Radio Shack clock? Possibly. If that's all you have to work with......
Aren't there several "amp designers" on this very forum that just cut and paste pieces of two (often guitar) amps together to make "their own design?" Then they have to ask why it doesn't work, but just know that it runs class A?
Maybe this kid stuck a Radio Shack clock in a box and called it his design for some attention, or he thought it was cool, or maybe he really did want to stir up some S%^$, or his father did, but we will never know now.
Aren't there several "amp designers" on this very forum that just cut and paste pieces of two (often guitar) amps together to make "their own design?" Then they have to ask why it doesn't work, but just know that it runs class A?
Maybe this kid stuck a Radio Shack clock in a box and called it his design for some attention, or he thought it was cool, or maybe he really did want to stir up some S%^$, or his father did, but we will never know now.
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