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From: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Weirdness Electronics
Message-ID: <1375@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 16:06:05 GMT
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Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them
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References:<4994@navy22.UUCP> <1990Nov6.214322.8051@cbnewse.att.com>

None of the following are really bogus, but they're all a bit weird.

When I was a kid, I made a thunderstorm detector from an article in 
PopTronics.  It contained an AM radio tuned to a dead area near the low 
end of the band.  The idea was that a thunderstorm would produce static.  
The audio output of the AM radio charged a capacitor which, when it got to 
a certain point, would sound a buzzer.

Another thing I used to do was very simple--take a telephone pickup coil 
(the old rectangular kind that sat under the phone) and hook it to a 
portable audio amplifier with the output going to an earphone.  Walk 
through the house "listening" to televisions, lightbulbs, etc.  This 
should be especially entertaining considering the current paranoia about 
VLF radiation.

Another thing which makes a great kids' toy is to hook up some diodes 
pretty much at random in a series/parallel arrangement with some switches 
and potentiometers.  Run a 60 Hz signal into one and and run the output to 
an oscilloscope.  The threshold behavior of the diodes should make little 
crinkly bits on the sine wave and should make them look like mountains and 
valleys.  Turning the knobs and flipping the switches should change the 
character of the shapes in entertaining ways.

Eric Pepke                                    INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET:   pepke@fsu
Florida State University                      SPAN:     scri::pepke
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052                    BITNET:   pepke@fsu

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