Curious George and the Make-your-own Metal Detector

My oldest is home with the sniffles, so today will probably be filled with coloring, reading and PBS.

While flipping channels for an early show, we found an episode of Curious George. I won’t go into detail as to why we don’t normally watch this show, it might take too long, but I will say we were surprised by what we saw.

George lost his toy robot in the sand and a scientist friend of the man in the yellow hat helped. She suggested they make a metal detector out of stuff you can find at home. I’m part geek, so watching it work was super cool.

Here’s what she suggested:

Find an AM/FM radio. Does anyone still own one? Yeah right, we do. Psst, I think you can find them at Radio Shack.

Get a handheld calculator and some tape too.

Tune the radio to AM. Turn the dial to the highest channel and make sure you hear only static.

Tape the calculator to the back of the radio and voilá, a metal detector (read it with French flair). It beeps when it gets near something metal.

We haven’t tried this, but you can bet we will as soon as I find our radio, wherever it’s hiding. Since I love this stuff so much, thanks to my mom, teachers and husband, we’ll have a series of experiments you can read in upcoming blogs. You won’t have to be a scientist to understand them, I hope, and they should be easy enough to try with your kids if you choose. I’m tagging them Mom’s Mad Science or something catchy like that.