Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves

Well.... yes, he's obviously built his clock out of an existing clock, but he's also 14, and casemodding a piece of old junk seems like an entirely age-appropriate project. I don't know whether he represented it as being a more original piece of work than it actually was, but who cares if he did? Kids spend half their time in fantasyland anyway, and he's probably used to making things that the adults around him don't really understand any more than he does.

I "built a stereo" once, when I was around that age, by taking apart a stereo I'd picked up at a garage sale and putting it back together in a different box. I added some toggle switches and an extra bank of speaker outs and a little amp which was another garage sale find, and that was my four-way "surround sound" bedroom stereo. Could I have actually built a stereo from bare components? Hell no! I didn't know anything yet! I'd never waste my time on such a trivial project now, but I still think it was a cool effort for a young teenager trying to get the hang of electronics.