On the Sly: The Hidden Buzzer

Today Alysen and I made a hidden buzzer. We tried it with one battery and it didn't work. Then we tried it with four batteries and a battery holder. At first it worked, but it had a mind of its own and was unpredictable. We decided to hide it a magazine, so that when someone touched it it would go off.

We needed a little help to make it work reliably so Graham made some changes and connected the wire with a paper clip of course -- it worked!

If you want to try the Hidden Alarm Challenge yourself, go to the PBS Kids DESIGN SQUAD web page. You can watch videos of the experiment. Then you can go to this page for instructions and the needed supplies.

As you know, Judy and Adam are coming to talk to us and see our experiments. Here are some questions I'll ask them:

1. Do you practice the experiments before you video tape them?

2. Do you make up the experiments? If not, where do you get the ideas?

3. Where do you make the experiments?

4. What did you want to be when you were little? When did you want to become engineers?

5. Do you ever get frustrated with experiments, or are they all relatively easy for you?

I can't wait to hear wait Adam and Judy talk to us about there experiments!