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| The senaro is that your school is on lock down. Your shop class tries to use the materials in the shop room and get communication to get help and find out what is happening in the school. The senaro can be found at makezine.com/makeshift. |
Ok so the high school is on lock down. But fortunately for our class we are in the metal shop room which is full of supplies. Our communication devices are 12 various cell phones, a computer with a wifi card, and the janitor’s walkie talkie. My last class before shop was “Basic Electronics 101" so I have learned some principles that apply bother to electronics and radio equipment. Without cell phone service the cell phones are rendered useless. However they still contain antennas and electronic parts. The same goes for the wifi card. Unless someone in a nearby neighborhood has an unsecured wireless network, there is no way our efforts will work. We’ve agreed that the walkie talkie is are best option. However the disadvantage of the walkie talkie is range of communication. But we are optimistic there is a high probability that help will be on 1 of the frequencies. The range can be extended by using the wire and attaching it to the antenna of the walkie talkie. Metal pipes can be used to lift the wire out the window and into the air for the maximum range of signal. It is important to note that we also have many electronics pieces in the shop equipment. We also have access to the breaker box. What we need is something to amplify the signal of the walkie talkie across the new makeshift antenna. What we need is a high rated transistor which is likely to be found in one of the metal shop equipment. Now with the newly learned knowledge from “Basic Electronics 101" we know that a current applied to the collector of the transistor can be magnified with a current applied to the transistor’s base. I know it stinks, but it was the best solution we could come up with given the situation. Anything that would magnify the walkie talkie’s output signal is essential. I was considering what would happen if we created a PNP junction (a makeshift transistor) was created by applying separate currents to a series of separate wires. We have the computers power supply and the breaker box to create various current strengths in the separate wires. We just couldn’t thing of anything other that a high rated diode that would stop electricity from destroying the electric components of the walkie talkie. It’s a MakeShift solution in itself. But we learned a great deal in today’s shop class. We’ve applied what we learned to a real world application. It is times like these when you see clearly, that everything you learn matters. References: 01. WikiPedia : for antennas 02.”Basic Semiconductor Components: Transistors,”: for transistor uses 03. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/radio8.htm : for info of radio waves
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