Solar system, illustration

I’ve always been intrigued by space, the planets, the solar system, galaxies, and how they all interact to fill in the space of the universe. I want to know why the planets are where they are and how they were formed. I also want to learn about the beginning of the universe and how it grew to be what it is today over billions of years. I want to learn about stars, how they are formed and the process of their lives. I also want to learn about how solar systems and galaxies function. One thing that I have always been fascinated by is black holes. I’m hoping to learn how and why our solar system and galaxy function the way that they do, and hopefully some of the other things I mentioned.

At this point, I believe I have learned enough information about the way that speakers function to be able to start building a custom set. I now know about the many parts of a speaker (and which ones I’ll need to purchase) and what their role is in producing sound. I learned a lot about sound waves and how they start as electrical signals and are translated into the sound waves that we hear, produced by the speaker. It’s actually fairly simple to build a speaker, as there are only a few necessary components.

I will be constructing my own custom set of working speakers. I know which parts I’m going to need to build the speaker that I want and I have a decent idea of how I’m going to assemble them. To make sure I don’t do this incorrectly I’ll review some of my research. I may add some designs or details to the outside casing of the speaker. Once I have assembled it fully, I will test it.

While I have learned a lot about the hardware of traditional speakers, I haven’t learned much about the software enhancements that many new speakers have. Bluetooth is a good example. It connects to devices wirelessly. I learned about the physical connection between a device and a speaker, but I’m also interested in the wireless connection and how that works.

Genius Hour has shown me that doing research on something that suits your interests can be really enjoyable. It also showed me the importance of time management. I found that it would have been much more challenging to research everything about speakers and build one if I hadn’t started when I did.

At this point in my project, I am just about done with the research component. I have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding of how speakers work. For example, I learned what parts make up a speaker and what each basic part does to produce the sound that we hear when we use a speaker. I am ready to buy the necessary supplies and equipment to construct a speaker, but I want to learn more about some extra functionalities that speakers are capable of utilizing, such as Bluetooth connectivity or a bass setting, so that I might install these into my speaker.

My idea for Genious Hour is to construct a set of working wired speakers. To learn about the design of a speaker and the functions of its parts, I researched what speakers are made of, how its parts interact to produce sound, and learned a little bit about sound tones. I also watched several YouTube videos that demonstrated how speakers work in great detail. The YouTube videos were probably my best source of information so far because they provide the information and show you how everything works as you learn about it. I also found a few useful websites that break down the construction of a speaker set to a step by step process. Hopefully, I’ll be able to build a decent quality set using them. A new question that I did not have before doing some research is how does the device playing music send signals through the auxiliary cord to the speakers?

My topic for Genius Hour is researching how speakers work and building a working set from scratch. Since my knowledge of the way speakers

work is very limited, I’ll need to become familiar with them. I do know that there is a disc in every speaker that moves to emit waves that we perceive as sound, but I don’t know exactly how it works. I want to learn how speakers interpret data sent from the device playing the music, how the discs in speakers actually create sound waves, and also how the brain reacts to music. I will watch a few videos about how speakers function and then research how to construct a fair-quality set. Building them from scratch will help to understand exactly how speakers work.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton