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 cincydooley wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

The kid said in a video that he whipped it up in the sunday evening before school, basically as an exercise to show to his tech teacher that he had an interest (he had previously been part of an electronics club at middle school). So I don't think it was particularly tough for someone with a basic understanding of electronics (i.e. which pins to connect the power supply to, whether you need an AC or DC capacitor and which way round it should go etc.).

Gotcha. I won't be watching the video so I wouldn't have seen that.

Just curious how much MIT needs to slow their roll, or if this kid is really the next big thing.

If he was smart enough to be the next big thing he would have powered his clock with a potato like the ones we built back in middle school and avoided the entire bomb scare fiasco in the first place.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

The kid said in a video that he whipped it up in the sunday evening before school, basically as an exercise to show to his tech teacher that he had an interest (he had previously been part of an electronics club at middle school). So I don't think it was particularly tough for someone with a basic understanding of electronics (i.e. which pins to connect the power supply to, whether you need an AC or DC capacitor and which way round it should go etc.).

Gotcha. I won't be watching the video so I wouldn't have seen that.

Just curious how much MIT needs to slow their roll, or if this kid is really the next big thing.

If he was smart enough to be the next big thing he would have powered his clock with a potato like the ones we built back in middle school and avoided the entire bomb scare fiasco in the first place.

If he had filled in side of his clock with baggies of mash potatos with wires sticking out then the bomb squad would of probably came

 cincydooley wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

The kid said in a video that he whipped it up in the sunday evening before school, basically as an exercise to show to his tech teacher that he had an interest (he had previously been part of an electronics club at middle school). So I don't think it was particularly tough for someone with a basic understanding of electronics (i.e. which pins to connect the power supply to, whether you need an AC or DC capacitor and which way round it should go etc.).

Gotcha. I won't be watching the video so I wouldn't have seen that.

Just curious how much MIT needs to slow their roll, or if this kid is really the next big thing.

MIT doesn't really need to "slow their role", as the statement they made was less about the kid's individual aptitude and more about the kind of attitude he had.

I can't speak for you, but the class I graduated in was rare and far between in regards to kids who would use some of their free time to do something optional for school.
I was one of those kids who would not do anything that cut into my free time and I kind of regret that now.

I made electronics stuff from plans and circuit boards when I was about that guy's age. I made an electronic digital die, and a mains wire intercom.

This is something kind of cool that kids like Ahmed might have in their future:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/18/smallbusiness/raiseme-college-scholarship/index.html

I played with electronics in my early teens.
I made an electronic timer (from a kit) with a 3 digit display that activated a siren in the kit, but the output signal could be used to do a lot of stuff. Also remote operating electrical ignitors was also pretty easy (r/c controller, receiver and bits).

I also used to blow **** up as a hobby (Chemistry in yr7). Science is awesome.

I dread to think how often I'd have been suspended these days.

I did lots of electronics at that age. Most of it made the magic blue smoke escape.

I also did lots of chemistry. Most of it burnt or produced lots of heat.

What I didn't do was mess around with AC power. That's the worrying thing about this, that rather than using batteries this parants kids let him mess with mains electricity.

 Psienesis wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Sadly if the kid's name was Joe Smith, they wouldnt have batted an eye, or probably given him some extra credit for the class

Of course it would have ended differently:

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/white-kid-builds-nuclear-reactor-and-homeland-security-offers-help/

This is a very loaded story.
The kid in the linked article built a 'fusion reactor'.
You can find out how to do this on YouTube




cold fusion is fairly mundane science and has nothing to do with fusion as we know it, which requires millions of degrees but is a chemical process.
Now there was a kid who made a [i]real[/i ]nuclear reactor at home, as in a fissile reactor. The reaction from government authorities was rather different and he was not in ay way encouraged to continue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn





As for the clock, yes it doesn't look more like a bomb than a clock, but that does not excuse the teacher for not chasing up the students story with his engineering project teacher.

So0me people have yet to learn the difference between security vigilance and scaremongering.

Are there any other pictures of the clock, yet? Besides the one that was set to make it look as bomb-like as possible, without any real sense of scale to let you know it was a pencil case instead of something larger? I know his father was suppose to go to the Irving PD yesterday to try to reclaim it, but I haven't heard any update on that since.

 Steve steveson wrote:
I did lots of electronics at that age. Most of it made the magic blue smoke escape.

I also did lots of chemistry. Most of it burnt or produced lots of heat.

What I didn't do was mess around with AC power. That's the worrying thing about this, that rather than using batteries this parants kids let him mess with mains electricity.

Looking at it, I'm not sure whether the clock is connected to the mains, or that cable just happens to be lying there. You can clearly see a 9V battery connector attached to the electronics, which makes more sense, and would be completely redundant if it were mains powered.

 -Shrike- wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:
I did lots of electronics at that age. Most of it made the magic blue smoke escape.

I also did lots of chemistry. Most of it burnt or produced lots of heat.

What I didn't do was mess around with AC power. That's the worrying thing about this, that rather than using batteries this parants kids let him mess with mains electricity.

Looking at it, I'm not sure whether the clock is connected to the mains, or that cable just happens to be lying there. You can clearly see a 9V battery connector attached to the electronics, which makes more sense, and would be completely redundant if it were mains powered.

A lot of alarm clocks in the US have 9V backups to keep the clock running even if the power grid fails due to storms or a squirrel in the transformer.

Could be that he kept that from the original clock. Hard to say for sure until we get more pictures.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ahmed-mohameds-parents-handed-out-pizza-to-reporters-outside-their-home-10505293.html

Good for them.



... Doesn't eat pork. Serves pepperoni and sausage pizza anyway

But the teenager encouraged other people his age to keep inventing: "Go for it! Don't let people change who you are, even if you get a consequence for it. I suggest you still show it to people, at least show them your talent."

Hooray, the family has smiles, the media has pizza, the kid's got a good future.

Ahmed said the arrest had made him lose his innocence.

“I can never look at the world in the same way,” he said. “I like science, but I look like a threat because of my brown skin.”

Boo, some people live to make other people's lives crappy, and this kid got a whole load of crappiness dumped on him.

That line sounds spoon fed to him by his activist father, IMO.

Activist Father?

It may or may not have come from his father. Considering how many people were already saying much the same thing in the media, he could have gotten the words from anywhere.

Including himself.

It makes the problem easy to dismiss, so it's not surprising to hear.

But if anybody arrested my kid for stupid fetched up reasons I might be acting a bit like an activist dad myself.

 d-usa wrote:
It makes the problem easy to dismiss, so it's not surprising to hear.

But if anybody arrested my kid for stupid fetched up reasons I might be acting a bit like an activist dad myself.

Its like the people saying he staged the photo if him in cuffs.
Um no. he had the cops stand the before they took the cuffs off BECAUSE he needed a photo to show how silly he looked to the media.

Yeah, it turns out the clock was disassembled and put into what appears to be an aluminum pencil case -- all in all not too impressive, though the inclusion of the power cord would make it a fire or electrical hazard. Not sure why he left the battery in the socket or even had the alarm on to begin with. There was even someone who recreated the device using the same components and it was a pretty stupid format in which to put a clock in.

His father is an activist apparently trying to make the case for Islamaphobia and was involved in some things in the past. Personally this looks like a political play that panned out.

 The Airman wrote:
His father is an activist apparently trying to make the case for Islamaphobia...

The case for Islamophobia appears to be pretty strong, considering this whole thing happened, and people have actually lined up to try and defend parts of it.

Yeah. Not really sure how insinuating this was some plot by the dad actually changes the reality that if the dad didn't have a point, this probably wouldn't have happened...

 sebster wrote:

 The Airman wrote:
His father is an activist apparently trying to make the case for Islamaphobia...

The case for Islamophobia appears to be pretty strong, considering this whole thing happened, and people have actually lined up to try and defend parts of it.

I misphrased; I meant to say that he has in the past tried to make a case for Islamaphobia. It's reasonable either way that this was either a setup or simply a kid trying to pass off an old, recased alarm clock as a personal creation/project. It really doesn't help that the US has been fighting the extreme ends of Islam overseas for the past fourteen years, alongside the Garland shooting a few months ago. The case for "Islamaphobia" can most certainly be made for this one, I won't doubt that, but I get the nagging suspicion that there's more to this that evil, racist Texans jumping on a teenager because they think he's a terrorist due to his skin color or religion. It's almost like the Irving police and ISD staff took the bait hook, line and sinker? Just given the family's history I have a hard time believing this is completely kosher.

Though it is tough to say whether or not the device would have caused some trouble if it was a <insert other religion/race/color> kid here. From the way it was handled it seems as though we have a case of Zero Tolerance getting out of hand and the police suspecting that the teenager built a hoax bomb, which lines up quite reasonably with their line of questions. In any case, that's my take of this.

 The Airman wrote:
I misphrased; I meant to say that he has in the past tried to make a case for Islamaphobia.

No, I understood what you were saying. My point is that the Dad's case has been proven by these events. Like if someone was saying 'this road crossing is unsafe', and then his own kid got run over at that road crossing, his case would be made stronger.

Though it is tough to say whether or not the device would have caused some trouble if it was a <insert other religion/race/color> kid here. From the way it was handled it seems as though we have a case of Zero Tolerance getting out of hand and the police suspecting that the teenager built a hoax bomb, which lines up quite reasonably with their line of questions. In any case, that's my take of this.

Yeah, and I think that argument is reasonable. Zero tolerance has jerked around good kids from every ethnic background.

Taking a clock out of its case and putting it into another case is not a difficult technical job.

However the reaction of the authorities is the issue here, not the complexity of the after-school project.

The implication now seems to be that the father made his son set up a situation in which the authorities could react to an Islamic seeming boy with a "movie bomb" looking electrical device that he claimed to have made at home, with the preconceived idea that the authorities would overeact.

And they did.

 sebster wrote:

 The Airman wrote:
I misphrased; I meant to say that he has in the past tried to make a case for Islamaphobia.

No, I understood what you were saying. My point is that the Dad's case has been proven by these events. Like if someone was saying 'this road crossing is unsafe', and then his own kid got run over at that road crossing, his case would be made stronger.

Though it is tough to say whether or not the device would have caused some trouble if it was a <insert other religion/race/color> kid here. From the way it was handled it seems as though we have a case of Zero Tolerance getting out of hand and the police suspecting that the teenager built a hoax bomb, which lines up quite reasonably with their line of questions. In any case, that's my take of this.

Yeah, and I think that argument is reasonable. Zero tolerance has jerked around good kids from every ethnic background.

Very true. This is why playing up a racist angle, making it seem he's the only kid who ever got caught up in stupid school and police decisions is losing people that would otherwise be solidly in Ahmed's camp.

Wired. I don't know why my statement was put into the quote box.


left a bracket open Reds8n

Evidently it was a repackaged timer, not a clock. It just had the countdown readout facing outward, and was repackaged from an existing timer, not home made.

 Frazzled wrote:
Evidently it was a repackaged timer, not a clock. It just had the countdown readout facing outward, and was repackaged from an existing timer, not home made.

Where'd you get that from?

The internetz is abuzz (translation youtube that is blocked for me). Still a clock to me, and doesn't impact how everything went down.

The yahoos are saying its a setup citing the dad. Even assuming that, it doesn't impact how everything went down.

Unless the kid acting like it was a bomb-which there has been no evidence I've seen- then this whole thing is stupid, and once the PoPo get involved, potentially unconstitutional.

EDIT: And then the crazies came out...
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/21/5_worst_right_wing_moments_of_the_week_sarah_palin_targets_ahmed_mohamed_partner/?ref=yfp

Richard Dawkins took to Twitter this weekend questioning the kid, the clock, and the motives behind the whole situation.