Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
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Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#2I don't think it has much bearing on the reaction to bringing the clock to his school, but man it really bothered me when I saw a picture of it - who adds a 9v connector like that to what would almost certainly be a first or second shot at an electronics project? (If it were only powered by 9v, like a small headphone amp, sure, but who's that concerned with backup power on a learning project?)
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#3I don't think it has much bearing on the reaction to bringing the clock to his school, but man it really bothered me when I saw a picture of it - who adds a 9v connector like that to what would almost certainly be a first or second shot at an electronics project? (If it were only powered by 9v, like a small headphone amp, sure, but who's that concerned with backup power on a learning project?)
So he found a wrecked clock in the kerbside junk, got it running, then tidied it up by stuffing it into an old pencil case.
Maybe he even wrecked it himself some time earlier.
Sounds like a reasonable project for a teenager. Why are you making such a fuss?
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#4I'm more than a little bothered by this.
Repackaging things is totally a classic and valid thing to do. People do that with everything from custom cars, audio equipment, to yes clocks. Kid you not there is a whole smallish subculture of making clocks of things.
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#5I don't think it has much bearing on the reaction to bringing the clock to his school, but man it really bothered me when I saw a picture of it - who adds a 9v connector like that to what would almost certainly be a first or second shot at an electronics project? (If it were only powered by 9v, like a small headphone amp, sure, but who's that concerned with backup power on a learning project?)
So he found a wrecked clock in the kerbside junk, got it running, then tidied it up by stuffing it into an old pencil case. Maybe he even wrecked it himself some time earlier. Sounds like a reasonable project for a teenager. Why are you making such a fuss?
That's perfectly reasonable. Sorry if it seemed like I was making a fuss.
Wasn't trying to pass judgment on the kid; even if he bought a brand new clock and stuck it in a case, I still think that's an admirable quality. The media is picking it up as he "made" a clock, and to me that didn't fit well with the photos.
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
So he found a wrecked clock in the kerbside junk, got it running, then tidied it up by stuffing it into an old pencil case. Maybe he even wrecked it himself some time earlier. Sounds like a reasonable project for a teenager. Why are you making such a fuss?
That's perfectly reasonable. Sorry if it seemed like I was making a fuss. Wasn't trying to pass judgment on the kid; even if he bought a brand new clock and stuck it in a case, I still think that's an admirable quality. The media is picking it up as he "made" a clock, and to me that didn't fit well with the photos.
It's kind of annoying that everyone says he "made" a clock, which he clearly didn't do. To me, that's kind of a slam to kids his age who really are out there making clocks from scratch.
But it's also very much a secondary or tertiary issue in the story, and just not worth fighting over.
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#7Oh boy Ahmed's Clock reminds me when I brought the (working) guts of a transistor radio to school in 3rd or 4th grade. The teachers proclaimed that I made a radio and had me show it to everyone. I ascribe this to the fact that most people have not ever seen the insides of any electronic device.
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#8Dunno about others, but I think an alarm clock the shape of a scale model time bomb is kind of cool (even more so if it looked like something right out of a video game). I don't see it as particularly dangerous -- it's more on the same level as painting Nerf guns green and black to make them look more realistic.
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#9Dunno about others, but I think an alarm clock the shape of a scale model time bomb is kind of cool (even more so if it looked like something right out of a video game). I don't see it as particularly dangerous -- it's more on the same level as painting Nerf guns green and black to make them look more realistic.
> I don't see it as particularly dangerous
Well, you weren't in the classroom where he set the alarm to go off, were you? So it's not like you're in a position to reasonably judge the reaction.
Suppose he did just take apart an old clock and piece it back together for fun, and didn't specifically try to make it look like a bomb. What was the purpose?
If it had been me, I would have been eager to explain why I chose that particular case. Like maybe-- look "how portable this is" or "look how you can hang this on the wall now" or something like that. Or maybe even just-- "well I was messing around and just happened to have the case so that's why I chose it." I also would have been up front about the fact that all I'd done was dismantled and re-assembled an old clock. I wouldn't have tried to pass it off as an original circuit-board project of my own.
There's nothing like that in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mW4w0Y1OXE
Also, as the OP notes, Ahmed makes a comment about using a cable to fasten it shut to make it look less suspicious. OP wonders why would he have been thinking something like that, if he did not know that a suitcase would in fact be suspicious? Sure, such a comment might have been made as some sort of back-rationalization after the whole thing blew up, but along with the other red flags it's a suspicious statement.
And if he did deliberately try to make it look like a bomb and did nothing to assure his teacher and fellow classmates that it was not real, then it's perfectly fair to call it a hoax.
Re: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves
#10I'm more than a little bothered by this. Repackaging things is totally a classic and valid thing to do. People do that with everything from custom cars, audio equipment, to yes clocks. Kid you not there is a whole smallish subculture of making clocks of things.
I'm more than a little bothered by this.
I'm way more bothered by the way everyone has just assumed that Ahmed's teacher and all the police are clearly racist idiots refusing to back down in the face of supposedly obvious misunderstanding, which seems FAR less obvious the more evidence comes out.