Hardware Projects (and Pranks) That Have Scared Observers

In the wake of the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed in Irving, Texas, for carrying to school an electronics project believed by a teacher to look like a bomb, Make Magazine has a timely reminder that Ahmed's project is one of many home-brew efforts that sparked (or could have sparked) extreme reactions. Make's list includes a few from tinkerers -- and pranksters -- that not only looked like bombs, but were fully intended to look that way. ("Back in 1967, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was arrested for building a metronome and storing it in a friend’s locker. He rigged a tin-foil contract sensor to the metronome in the locker, and set up the device to tick faster when his buddy opened the locker.") The article doesn't note the 2007 incident in Boston in which a guerilla advertising campaign for "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" raised fears of a terrorism and led to two arrests. Gawker has a slightly more pointed article about other students who have specifically brought home-assembled clocks to school, without being arrested.

Comments

Re:Actually...

[kheldan]

Friend.. read the original news story: http://www.dallasnews.com/news...

The kid never claimed to have 'invented' anything, or that he'd even built the clock from scratch, he came right out and said that he'd thrown it together in 20 minutes out of junk parts, to take to school with him, to show his teachers what he was capable of; but of course once the media (not to mention the public) got hold of the whole thing, the story started getting distorted very quickly. What we have here is a 14-year-old boy who did something as ill-advised and devoid of forethought for possible consequences as any other 14-year-old boy might have done; he never considered that some dumb adults at his school would freak out because they have no understanding of what they were actually looking at. I'll bet that if he had told his folks he was going to take that to school with him, and showed it to them, they might have told him it wasn't a great idea simply because something like this would happen.

Re: Actually...

[kenh]

Watch this interviewwith Chris Hayes from MSNBC - within the first minute he claims to have bought a bunch of parts and put them together himself.

Re:Poptarts have gotten the same response

[Zero__Kelvin]

You evidently can't understand what you read.

"5 More Maker Projects That Freaked People Out" ... "Ahmed Mohamed is not the first Maker with a project that upset people who didn’t understand it. Technology projects can look scary to the uninitiated. Several big names in this field have had to deal with the reactions engendered by their projects." ... "Here are five more Makers who built gizmos that others found upsetting." - empahasis added

Show us the word school in the Title or lead paragraph.

Re:It's A Different World Today

[Anonymous Coward]

I was with you until you threw that not own a gun thing in there. I'm not sure how you can see right through the terrorism smoke screen but buy the gun lie hook line and sinker.

GP is supported by evidence. I didn't even have to look hard - it was the first result of my first google search. tl;dr; you and/or your family members are more likely to die if you have a gun in the house.

Now, if you are a person who respects the lethality of a gun, are responsible enough to keep it in a safe place when not in use, and are mindful enough to teach the rest of your family how to properly handle and respect the weapon, your experience might be quite different. But let's be honest - the average person likely does none of those things. And even if you do everything right most of the time - it still takes only one lapse for things to go bad, hence the emphasis on responsibility.