DVS Beats by Diego and Anu

Step 1:

Materials List 1 Glue stick 1 Post-it note

About 3 arm length of 28 AWG Wire

At least 4 Neodymium magnets

Sand paper

3.5 mm stereo jack ( aux plug )

Electrical tape

Wire cutter

Scissors

2 Plastic cups

Phone

12. Solder machine (optional)

Procedure:

Gather your materials Get post-it and wrap it around the glue stick. Get arm length of wire and cut it with wire cutter. Leave 15 cm on both ends of wire and coil it around the glue stick tightly 37 times. Once you’re done coiling, remove the coil from the glue stick Sand the ends of the wire until there is no red on it. This allows current to flow directly through the copper wire with no resistance. Get 2 Neodymium magnets. Get plastic cup. Put one magnet in the cup and one on the outside Put the armature on top of the magnet laying down. Get electrical tape to tape the armature and magnet down. Get the 3.5 mm stereo jack Get the sanded ends of the wire and insert them in the small hole on both sides of the terminal Make sure the wires not touching Insert the headphone jack into a phone to hear the sounds.

Step 2: Assembly, Sanding, and Coiling.

We sand both ends of the wire until it becomes copper because since copper is a conductor, it’ll have less interference and more current flowing through the wire. Here is a short clip of sanding the wire: Link.We predicted that the more coils, the better the quality. We found that 25 and 30 coils did not work, but 32 was successful. This may have been due to change of control variables, but we continued to use 32 coils. Here is a short clip of coiling wire: Link.

Step 3: Magnet Positioning and Diaphragm Assembly. We need the permanent magnet in the middle of the voice coil because the alternating current from the voice coil makes the magnet attract and repel off the voice coil to make it vibrate. While it vibrates, it creates sound waves which are pushed out with the diaphragm. Trial 1: 4 magnets,Trial 2: 3 magnets, and Trial 3: 2 magnets. We predicted that the more magnets the better the sound. We found that all trials worked but 4 magnets produced the best sound. 3 magnets also produced good sound, but 2 magnets were not as strong as 3 and 4 magnets.Trial 1: foam ,Trial 2: plastic, and Trial 3: paper. We predicted that because foam was the most sturdy, it would produce the best sound. However, we could not get the speakers to work when using foam. We found that plastic would produce the highest quality sound, and paper was not as good.

Step 4: Plug and Play

In the picture shown, the tips of the copper wire is sanded and are wrapped in the holes of the terminals, allowing current to flow through the aux plug into the wire. The sound waves are produced from the magnet and the voice coil attracting and repelling from each other which cause them to vibrate. When it vibrates, the vibration goes to the diaphragm and produces the sound waves from there. Alternating current is important because it is what causes the magnet to vibrate. The current switching changes the direction rapidly so it vibrates. In our speaker, we noted that the lower bass sounds make the cup vibrate the most and became less audible. The higher pitched sounds also caused our speaker to become less audible.

Step 5: Troubleshooting

If by any chance you can’t hear anything coming through your speaker, you might want to check if you sand down the ends of the wire correctly on both ends until you see copper. If you sanded it correctly, make sure your wires are NOT touching each other when you insert the wire/ through the holes of the terminal. Another thing you might want to do is change the variables. The variables that worked for us, such as plastic cup and 32 coils, may not work for everyone. The more magnets and coils should produce better sound.