Anytime I am working on a project around the house, Emma will drop whatever she is doing and become my new best friend. Last Sunday I decided that it would be fun if we worked on a science project together. I chose a project that had minimal parts, an arts & crafts component, and that could be completed in a relatively short period of time. The project comes courtesy of Jose Pino who wrote the instructions in Make Magazine. I know what you are thinking, what kind of a project is that for a two and a half year old. Hey Daddy needs love too! There’s only so much coloring and Play dough a man can take.
In any event, the project took a little longer than expected (Emma got fixated on the scissors and just wanted to cut paper). I put her to bed and the next day we completed the project. The sound was better than I would have suspected but there is always room for improvement. I didn’t have any Styrofoam plates so I substituted some leak-proof paper plates (cause that’s all we had). The dangerous components to this project are the N50 grade neodymium magnets which are ridiculously powerful and brittle. They will pinch your fingers pretty bad if you bring two together and if they collide can shatter (The ones I bought were coated in nickel to give them strength). They will also damage electronic equipment, magnetic media, etc. if waved too close. Needless to say, you need to keep these things away from anything that you love.
If you are curious as to how good the sound reproduction can be with a paper plate I have uploaded an audio sample that I recorded with a stereo audio recorder:
This is the coolest blog I ever found! Snoopy is not my hero anymore, Emma has taken his place!