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This is my excited face....

  Morse code anyone?  Well, big brother skunk and I finally finished our simple telegraph. He's been very excited, but we had to wait for my hands to heal a bit.  We ended up boosting the power to 4 AA's, and messed with the angle of the clacker for quite a while before we got it to work.  But, work it does.  We spent an hour sending messages back and forth.  Since neither of us knows Morse code, that means we passed about 10 words and it took an hour!  In the process, we learned that Father Skunk can't spell...but Tim figured out what "I lve xou." meant.

Finished wiring the electromagnet

Wiring in the contact for the "key"

Installing the "clacker"

  Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that we built a "clacker" type telegraph.  It operates by using an electomagnet to attract a steel bar, which makes a click.  Then when you release the key, the bar flies up again and hits a nail head, which makes a clack.  So a dot is "click clack", while a dash is "click.........clack".  It is very difficult to tell sometimes what is a click or a clack.  I think we may eventually rewire it to use a buzzer , or a light instead.  That would be a lot easier to distinguish.

Installing the "key"

  Big brother skunk has had a ball with this, so I'm going to run with it.  I picked up an electronics book for myself, so I can teach him a little.  He's nowhere near the math required to pull off algebra, but his comprehension of concepts really blows my mind.  I should be able to get him to understand what components are, what they do, etc.  I will wait a few years to teach him how to decide what size components he needs.  Ohm's Law is a bit difficult to calculate for a 3rd grader!

Yes, I know this is not Ohm's Law, but it gets my point across

   He doesn't know it yet, but I picked up a bunch of components from Radio Shack today.  I'm going to spring them on him later this week.  Resistors, Diodes, LED's...he is going to be like a kid in a candy store.  With his imagination, who knows what we will end up with...



  If anyone is interested in the telegraph design, (No, not the lawnmower...) or how to build a similar project, I got the idea from http://www.w1tp.com/perbuild.htm .