By Alex Adams

For the 2011 Google Science Fair

 Choosing My Project
• I decided that I wanted to do my project on making a
homemade speaker. I didn’t know how I was going
to make it though.
• I found a paper online by Scott Porter, Daniel J.
Domme and Jeffrey S. Whalen, Graduate Students,
Pennsylvania State University. That paper helped
me decide on how I was going to do my project.
 How a Speaker Works
• A speaker works by sending an electronic version of
your music (a changing current) through a coil of wire
which is placed in a strong magnetic field. The current
in the wire creates its own magnetic field that interacts
with the other magnetic field. The changes in the
signal shakes the coil. This coil is attached to the bowl
of the speaker. When it shakes, it makes sound,
creating the music.
How My Speaker Will Work
• My speaker uses magnetic wire and cheap, high-
grade neodymium magnets. The wire is wrapped
around part of a paper towel tube that is attached
to the bottom of a Styrofoam bowl. The wire and
magnets create the signal and cause the
vibrations which will resonant in a bowl, creating
music.
 Materials
• For my project, to make my speaker, I used a shoebox with
an attached, folding lid, two, 2” c-clamps, eighteen
neodymium half inch diameter magnets, a medium sized
foam bowl, an empty paper towel roll, magnetic wire, latex
sheeting, and Gorilla Glue.
• It was a bit hard finding all of
the materials, but most were
very cheap. The ones that
had to be ordered online and
were more expensive were
the neodymium magnets and
the latex sheeting ($50 total).
These are the materials I started
with for my project.
 Assembly
• I started my project first by trimming my paper towel
roll to what I thought was the correct length, 2 ½”.
• I rolled some of the magnetic wire around the bottom
of the roll. I then used a small amount of tape to
secure the wire.
 Assembly
• Following that, I glued the end of the roll that the
magnetic wire was not on to the center of the bottom
of the foam bowl.
 Assembly
• After the roll had dried to the bowl, I glued the top of
the bowl to the latex sheeting.
• Once that had also securely dried, I cut out the latex
covering the bowl with scissors.
 Assembly
• Following that, I cut out a hole in the
top of the box slightly larger than the
bowl.
• I then placed the bowl in the hole so it
was suspended by the latex sheeting.
• I finally glued the latex to the top of the
box.
 Assembly
• After I finished the top part of my box, I put the
magnets on the c-clamps, eight on the outside and
one inside.
 Assembly
• I finally glued the c-clamps down as the last part of
my project.
 Testing
• I couldn’t tell until the c-clamps were dry if they were
in the correct spot.
• When I tested to see if they were in the correct spot,
they were off by a great amount in front of where the
tube was.
 Perfecting
• With the discovery that my c-clamps
were in the wrong spot, I glued them
again.
• They were closer this time, but still
slightly off.
• With many tries, closer each time, I
finally got them in the desired spot.
• With them in the correct spot, I
realized that the paper towel roll was
cut too long and it didn’t allow for the
bowl to move down at all.
 Perfecting
• I trimmed the paper towel roll to the right length by
taking off the wire and cutting part of the end of the
roll off, about an half inch. I then rewrapped.
• After the roll was trimmed, it came to my attention
that I couldn’t get the ends of both c-clamps to fit in
the roll. Only one would fit at a time.
• It took me awhile to think of something; but, I finally
decided to cross the c-clamps over just a bit, but I
was careful to not cross the magnetic fields.
 Perfecting
• This time the c-clamps fit correctly I could actually
try and play music on it!
 Final Testing
• I finally got to test my speakers by wrapping the leads
of my magnetic wire to the cords of an old stereo
system.
 Failure
• When I first tried playing music on my speakers, I
got no sound and was disappointed.
• I double checked everything but could not figure out
what was wrong. I thought my speaker was not
going to work.
• Then I noticed that the magnetic wire was a different
color than the speaker wire. I decided to try filing my
magnet wire with a fingernail file, in case the wire
was insulated.
 Final Testing Again
• After I filed the end of the wire, I tried it again, this
time it worked and actually played music!
• It had problems on bass sounds crackling a lot. It did
fine on high notes though.
• The speaker went to 85 decibels and then the wire
started to overheat, turned bright red, and smoked,
which was not good!
• When I compared this same volume setting on a
normal speaker, it measured 120 decibels which can
cause instant hearing damage!
 Final Project
• My final project was a
great achievement to me
and it was very wonderful
for it to be a shoebox and
play music.
• I also thought that for the
most part it looked very
nice, not messy!
 After the Project
• I spent a lot of time on the project because of the
gluing and having to wait to get all of my materials.
• In total, I spent around three months doing this
project.
• It was fun to work on it and to assemble it. I also
enjoyed purchasing the parts for it.
• It was pretty cheap and it was able to play medium
quality music.
 Plans For Future
Improvement
• I plan to change and try different things on my
project, I would try maybe a larger shoebox and
different sizes of c-clamps. I would see what kind of
difference that they would make on the sound.
• I would also try a plastic bowl on top and also try a
stretchy polyester top instead of latex.
• I would mainly try to get rid of the buzzing sound it
makes when playing bass and to get louder sound
without overheating. Maybe thicker wire will help
with that.
 More Planes for Future
Improvement
• In redoing this project I would also try to get the
speaker pieces more accurate on the first try and not
have to keep adjusting things over and over.
• I am also going to submit it to the Acoustical Society
of America to see if they will post it on their website
as an easy to understand project on how to make a
shoebox into a speaker!
 Thanks
• I want to thank my mom for telling me about the
Google science fair, helping me decide what to
do for my project, and encouraging me to solve
my problems throughout the project.
• I also wanted to thank Scott Porter, Daniel J.
Domme, and Jeffrey S. Whalen for the list of
materials they used on their Singing Shoebox.