Casey’s been steadily learning about and experimenting with electronics since last year, when he made his first crystal radio. Two of his projects were on display at Project Sharing this week: a wind generator and a much more complicated radio.
Over the summer Casey got interested in generating electricity with wind power. This involves lots more than just making cardboard blades that spin: he wound coils of copper wire which, when rotated past magnets, generate electricity. He experimented with the number of coils, the size of the coils, and their positions vis a vis the magnets until he found the most effective configuration. The wind generator on display at Project Sharing is capable of generating 1.5 volts.
Also on display was something that looked like a cardboard box filled with plastic pieces playing KJZZ. It was Casey’s AM / FM radio. He put together the radio from scratch using snap-together components — resistors, transistors, capacitors, etc. — modifying schematics he found on the internet. He made a speaker from a styrofoam bowl and hand wound coils.
Next to the radio there was a sign written by Ed: “This radio was working great before I dropped it but now it’s all in pieces. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” (The snap couplings come apart easily, he explains, and he had caught his backpack on the radio and pulled it onto the floor.)
But when Casey showed up for Project Sharing around 7 o’clock, he wasn’t worried. He simply said, “I think I can put it back together again.” Even though he didn’t have the circuit diagrams, he was able to rebuild the circuits from memory.
Ed says, “Some radios can be simple, but that’s not the case here. This story is especially impressive when you know how complicated the circuitry is in Casey’s radio.”
