You’ve probably listened to music or sports on the radio. Teenage and tween-age researchers from around the world did more than just listen to the radio, this past May. They built one!
All were middle-school delegates to the 2015 Broadcom MASTERS International program. To be chosen, each had earlier exhibited an outstanding research project in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. These are the so-called STEM fields. And like STEM, MASTERS also is an acronym. It stands for “Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering Rising Stars.”
Broadcom Foundation sponsors both a U.S. competition and this companion international program. Projects by this year’s international delegates covered topics as varied as slime molds, running shoes and spacecraft. The young researchers convened in Pittsburgh, Pa., at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, or ISEF. (The Society for Science & the Public runs the Broadcom MASTERS, Broadcom MASTERS International and Intel ISEF. It also publishes Science News for Students.)
Two-dozen international MASTERS delegates built radios during a visit to Carnegie Mellon University. Tom Sullivan is an electrical and computer engineering professor at the Pittsburgh school. Working in his lab, each young researcher received a kit with a circuit board, wires, electronic components and instructions. Graduate student Alexei Colin explained how to use the kit. Then the budding engineers got to work.
A radio does three basic things. First, it harvests radio waves. Those waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is all around us. Second, the radio changes the signal from a selected station into an electric current. The force of that current, or its voltage, varies based on the sound information coded in the electrical signal. Finally, the radio converts that varying voltage into sound waves that we can hear. To make all that happen, the Broadcom MASTERS students each built their very own radio.
