Using this kit, local students are learning about engineering, thanks to a program developed by Sweet Briar's engineering program.

‘Speaker Kits’ a Hit at Local Schools

SUZANNE RAMSEY
College relations staff writer

A kit's components.


The final product.

What can you make out of a disposable cup, a speaker jack and a few household items? Local students are learning you can make a speaker for your iPod, thanks to a program developed by the Sweet Briar College engineering program.

Last spring, director of engineering Hank Yochum and assistant professor of engineering Dorsa Sanadgol created a “speaker kit” that could be taken to local high schools, specifically math and physics classes.

“It’s amazing,” Sanadgol said of the final product. “You can actually hear the music and it’s quite clear.”

A kit consists of a Styrofoam and plastic cup, a spool of thin copper wire, two rubber bands, a square of sandpaper, a tiny magnet and a speaker jack, all housed in a small plastic container. Each costs about $4.

So far, more than 300 area students have participated in the program. Classes are taught by Sweet Briar faculty and are in line with the state’s standards of learning.

“This activity incorporated several SOLs, particularly the SOLs dealing with experimentation, magnetism and sound,” said Jon Collins, who teaches physics and computers at Amherst County High School.

Last spring, kits were taken to four area high schools — Amherst County, Altavista, E.C. Glass and Virginia Episcopal School. This fall, the faculty would like to increase that number to seven or eight.

Phoebe Hyman, engineering project coordinator, said the program is aimed at “outreach for local schools [and] indirectly for recruiting. A lot of people in the area don’t know we have an engineering school. The goal is to get them excited about engineering.”

According to Sanadgol, it’s working. “Their reaction when it was done was so exciting,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh my god, it works!’ ”

Local teachers agree.

“The students were excited to have the opportunity to make and keep the speakers,” Collins said. “I thought the [Sweet Briar] staff did an excellent job in presenting the activity and we hope to do it again this year.”

Altavista High School teacher Amy McCarty echoed Collins. “We did them in my physics classes [and] they went great,” she said.

McCarty also used the kits this summer with middle school students attending the Women in Engineering Camp, a program organized by Central Virginia Community College and supported by local businesses, the National Science Foundation and Sweet Briar.

“I had 15 girls in the day camp and they made the speakers the first day of camp,” she said. “They loved them! Their work was so meticulous and they were so excited when they were completed.

“I provided them with four different kinds of cups so that they could test to see which kind gave them the best sound quality. They compared their sound quality and independently found ways to improve it.”

For more information on the speaker kits program, e-mail Phoebe Hyman at phyman@sbc.edu
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Stories about the speaker kits program ran in the Lynchburg News & Advance on Aug. 16 and the Winston-Salem Journal on Aug. 21. Since that time, Hyman has received numerous inquiries about the speaker kits program from schools in North Carolina.