I ought to explain how I am able use the facilities I have access to when making some of these projects. I work at an independant school as their Senior Science and Design & Technology technician.
I, and my small team of
minions techncians, do all the background work to enable practical work to take place in these subjects - ordering & preparing materials, maintaining equipment & tools, Health & safety, etc as well as assisting in teaching.
This means I must be at least as competent as the teachers with all the tools & science equipment, which gives me a good excuse for
messing about practicing - and that is how I am able to use work stuff to do a few 'home jobs' in my own time.
I often develop teachers ideas into workable classroom practical exercises or projects...
...and today's 'Tale from the Wobbly Workshop' is such an example.
In Physics, we are looking at applications of magnetic fields. One of the teachers tried to make loudspeakers, making cone shapes from paper and sellotaping a paper tube to the end of them. A coil of enammeled copper wire was wound around the paper tube and the assemebly was then placed over a bar magnet. When the ends of the coil were connected to a signal generator, the 'speaker' issued forth a rasping farting noise.
I volunteered to come up with something better.
I ordered some neodymium magnets that arrived yesterday and I had a good think about how I could use them to make a speaker.
Today I collected the stuff together and decided to video my attempt at creating a speaker.
Let's see how long it takes to make a speaker
http://www.youtube.com/v/BSg0Pw3GvkQ&rel=1I think we need to make it easier to connect them when we run it in class.
And I'll have to do a risk assessment for a proceedure for using the magnets safely.