Crystal Radio Project

          This week I built my crystal radio, which was my favorite project. There were also downsides and hard parts too, but we managed. I will be talking about this project and what I liked about it in this report.

          One thing that I liked about this project was that I got to build it. It was made out of scrap wood for the base, or what I put everything on. My parents helped me screw the scrap wood together. I used 26 gauge copper wire and wrapped it around a toilet paper roll 115 times (25 once, and 90 next) for the tuning coil and the smaller coil.

          Then I used a paper towel roll with aluminum foil wrapped around it for one part of the capacitor. For the other part that moves, I got a piece of paper with aluminum foil taped on it and I wrapped it around the paper towel roll so that it would not come off, but it would still move around. Then I completed the capacitor by taping one wire on each of the two parts.

          Next I used some long wires for my antenna and earth ground connection. For the earth ground, I used a plug with a third grounding prong on it. I added the diode and the earpiece and connected the wires together according to the directions on the YouTube video.

          I am so happy I actually got to build the radio instead of just buying a kit or the radio itself. Also, it was practically made from junk! I cannot believe that it could actually work!

          However, as I mentioned, there were hard parts. One of the most challenging parts was getting it to work. We tried many ideas to finally get it to work. I thought I heard some voices on it, but I accidentally changed the capacitor, and I lost the signal. We are going to try a couple other ideas like moving the antenna in different directions to see if we can get a better signal the next time we plug it in.

          Learning about radios and electronics and building them really made me want to learn more about them. I would be able to do so many things knowing about electronics and how to work them. I am so inspired by this part of the class and I am so excited to learn more about radios and electronics!