Week Five: A Taste of Victory

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Friday, July 6, 2018

By:

Amanda Williams

The SOCK is coming along!

Like most projects, you catch a glimpse of a working product, but then another obstacle stops you. How will we ship violin bows? How will we use speakers without blowing out your eardrums? "It's too late into the internship to back out of this project now," I thought to myself as I frantically tried to make a cheap tiny violin bow with a wooden dowel, violin hair, and a hacksaw. (You can guess how that turned out). 

As Austin Kleon puts it, I'm thinking (hoping) that was the "dark night of the soul" stage of the project.

Then came the brilliant idea: sheet metal! Less metal = less power needed to excite vibrational modes = not wanting to blow your eardrum out = victory.

A Home Depot trip later, a little snipping and gluing, and viola! A working chladni plate demo with speakers. 

Even though it might be taking a little extra TLC to get these chladni plates working, I am envisioning the final product of this SOCK to be one that SPS will be proud of. Thank goodness for good mentors who believed in this project when I wasn't so sure. Next step: mass production and prototyping an amplifier for these babies. 

Amanda Williams