Ricky's Radical Inventions Ricky's Radical Reinventions

Hi, and welcome to Ricky's Radical Reinventions.

My name's Ricky Martin, and I love making stuff.

I'll give anything a go, me.

Drilling, doodling, experimenting,

oooh! A bit of twiddling.

That's my van.

Drawing,

er, talking,

origami,

skateboarding,

all sorts of animation.

Oops!

But mostly, I like to figure out how things work,

reinvent them for myself, and then finally make them really big.

Have you ever thought that everything you've ever used

has been invented?

Yep, that's invented.

This is also invented.

And that's...that's not invented!

That's grown!

All right, so not everything, but wherever you are,

whatever you're doing,

chances are you're probably using somebody's invention.

Now, this got me thinking.

We could reinvent some cool inventions

with stuff you've got lying around your house.

Trust me, you'll be amazed at what you can make.

So, we're going to look at inventions we can redo,

they're going to be radical, and my name's Ricky.

Today, we're in Bristol.

Well, right now, I'm in a field,

and the invention we're going to be looking at is...

The speaker!

Yeah, the speaker.

We're going to make one that'll work for your iPod or MP3 player,

-but that's not all.

-Oh, no?

No. We're then going to take my radically reinvented speaker

and make it really big, and I reckon it'll be so good,

it'll work for a live performance with a mega singer.

Then, some expert judges will tell me whether they think it's good...

ALL: Yeah!

..or bad.

ALL: Boo!

This is going to be awesome!

Oh, yeah!

I show you how to make a speaker for your MP3 player,

using stuff you'll have lying around.

I run through a field,

I get to grips with how sound works, or try to, anyway.

I have no idea who these guys are, or what they're doing.

There's a cow with a speaker in it,

and I find a team to help build speakers for a star performer,

but the big question is, will these bits of cardboard actually work?

I'm scared!

So, who do you think our speaker-testing singer is?

Well, for a start,

it's a lady - lady's mouth.

No, she doesn't wear glasses!

No, much prettier than that.

Now, that's just weird!

Normal eyes, please, not cat's eyes.

Guessed who it is, yet?

Yeah, you know it. She's an X Factor finalist. It's Kitty Brucknell!

The speakers we're going to make have to be strong enough

to hold up against Kitty's powerful voice,

and she does give it some welly.

# Oh, live and let die... #

Woah, nice one, Kitty!

Do you know, some singers can have such a loud and piercing tone

that they can smash glass with their voice alone?

But how does that happen?

Apparently, it's all down to this.

WINE GLASS RINGS

That's resonance. It's the tone you need to make.

But it's not just about the tone, it's also about the volume.

Now, it's extremely difficult to do, and it's quite dangerous,

so don't go trying this yourself.

GLASS RINGS

RICKY SINGS AT VARIOUS PITCHES

RICKY SINGS AGAIN

You know what? I don't think it's possible.

Oh, hang on. What's this?

JAIME SINGS

Yes!

Glass number 90!

All right! But he's trained for years to do that.

And he is an expert.

Now, to break a glass,

your voice has to be over a certain amount of decibels.

Decibels are the way we measure sound.

For example, (a pin drop, 15 decibels.)

My voice, 50 decibels.

TELEPHONE RINGS

60 decibels.

ENGINES ROAR

120 decibels!

Now, I think our speakers will reach about 80 decibels when...

VOICEOVER: Kitty Brucknell!

..performs. Which, according to my decibel meter, is about this loud!

But it's those guys in the animal kingdom that have really

smashed it when it comes to the decibel stakes.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

The loudest animal in the ocean is the blue whale,

whose call can reach up to 188 decibels,

and can be heard for hundreds of miles underwater.

It's hard for us to hear it, though, as it's such a low frequency.

There he goes!

Shall we look at him again? Rewind, fold him up.

Ah, there he is, swimming around. Through the desk. Oh! Gone.

And you can find out how we did that on the website, by the way.

Now, the loudest land animal is the howler monkey,

who kicks up a right racket, and can be heard from three miles away.

It's a bone in their throat that makes them so loud,

as it acts like an amplifier.

MONKEY HOWLS

Shush, now, monkey!

It's a very annoying noise.

Another annoying noise is, of course, a burp. Excuse me.

The loudest burp ever recorded was 109 decibels.

My mate Laurie - that's him, he works on the show.

He's got a disgustingly loud burp.

He's going to have a go at breaking the record. Come on, Laurie!

109 to beat.

LAURIE BURPS

Wow, that was, eugh!

So, how loud was that?

101.4 decibels. Not my best.

Do you know, that isn't that bad, that's pretty good. Nice going.

He's loud, but not as loud as the loudest sound on earth.

That would be a volcanic eruption.

Think of it as an earth burp.

But even louder would be a meteorite hitting the Earth.

Aaah!

Nah, a big one.

Yeah, that's better!

In space, there is no air, so nothing for noise to travel through.

(So all is quiet.)

So all those explosions, bangs and laser noises you hear

in those space movies when stuff gets blown up

are all totally made up.

Really, it'll be dead quiet.

But not very exciting, though, eh?

That's enough of all this. We've got speakers to make.

But how do speakers work?

OK, let's work with a cow.

Let's put a speaker in it, there we are, give it some electricity,

MP3 player will do.

The speaker needs a copper coil surrounded by a magnet.

When switched on, the electrical current travels to the copper coil.

The magnet then makes the coil vibrate, which results in sound.

I think we can make a speaker out of some old CD cases, magnets,

copper-enamelled wire, a bit of sticky tape,

and some headphone cable.

Now, what I'm going to do is whack a little bit of glue

on the top of this magnet here.

And...

Hang on a minute, I'm just going to go and work something out.

So, what we're going to do is have the CD case here.

'Ah, I know what you're thinking, but that's a special pen,

'and a special van.

'Not something to try yourself.'

Hello, Morph!

Oh!

Ha-ha-ha!

Ha-ha-ha!

Uh-oh!

Ta-dah!

Ha-ha!

Oh!

BANG!

Ha-ha-ha!

Did you just hear something?

Anyway, I've worked it out! Let's do it!

But I'm not doing this on my own.

I'm going to find me some helpful team-mates.

Keys to your Gran's house,

Mr Chicken, the tea cosy,

gravy granules, or a guitar.

Usually some laying around somewhere.

Oh, yeah, some scissors.

An old envelope, or a new one, I'm not really bothered,

it's entirely up to you.

Here we go, then. Step one.

Right, the first thing you need to do is grab your copper wire

and wind it around something cylindrical.

About 40 turns should do it.

Then carefully pull it off, and fasten it tightly with some

sticky tape, and it should end up looking like this.

The next thing you need to do is grab your CD case,

and stick a magnet to one side.

Now, take your envelope, cut off its corner,

and then cut off ITS corner,

creating a cone that'll work as a speaker's resonator.

Next, you need to stick your coil to the top of the resonator,

and you do this just by looping over a little bit of sticky tape.

Then, grab some more tape

and fold it back on itself so it's sticky on the outside.

And put that on top of the magnet in the CD case.

Now, you can stick your coil and your resonator on top of that.

Sand the ends of your coil and sand the ends of the MP3 wire,

twisting together,

connect that to your MP3 player, and now it's time to rock.

Ha-ha-ha!

Oh!

Uh-oh!

We find out how loud our speakers are,

I go for a low-frequency snack.

Oooh! That's got to hurt!

I phone an old friend,

not everything goes to plan.

Come on, everyone, we're running out of time!

And we see if my radical reinvention actually works.

So, it's the moment you guys have all been waiting for.

It's time to test out those speakers. You guys ready?

KIDS: Yeah.

QUIET MUSIC PLAYS

That is actually coming from the speaker!

That's so cool!

Oh, amazing!

That's coolsome!

That's so coolsome!

Yeah, that's cool.

We need it to be over 80 decibels, and at the moment, it's about 60.

Now, there's one other thing I haven't told you.

It's that we need these speakers to be loud

and good enough for a performance,

because we've got a guest coming along to sing through them.

And it's X Factor finalist, Kitty Brucknell.

-What? No, it isn't!

-It is.

-She won't come.

-She is coming!

She's not!

Kitty is definitely coming later to sing for you,

through the speakers that you're going to make.

-Really?

-Yes, she is.

-No, she's not!

-She is!

-She's not coming!

-She is coming!

-She's not!

-No, she's not!

All right, then I'll just call her.

-Ricky, give her a call.

-Call her, then.

-Call her, then.

PHONE RINGS

-Hello?

-Hello, Kitty, it's Ricky.

-Hi, Ricky!

-You still up for coming to play for us later?

Oh, absolutely, I can't wait! It's going to be so much fun.

Bye, Kitty, bye!

It is her!

You guys are going to be helping me

make the speakers that she's going to play through.

Do you think we're up for the job?

ALL: Yeah!

-Are the speakers up to the job?

-ALL: No!

In that case, I'm going to need some expert advice.

I think the speakers will be good enough

if we make them bigger, but they're not at the minute.

They're not loud enough.

They're pretty useless,

unless everyone in the crowd held one up to their ear.

If we make them bigger, and a bigger magnet,

they'll probably be good enough.

This is the Acoustic Transducer Company. Sounds good.

These guys make 1500 speakers a year.

They supply to over 60 countries,

and have kitted out the studios of Pink Floyd, Lenny Kravitz,

The Rolling Stones and other people your mum and dad have listened to.

Their production line isn't too different from ours.

They have people doing all the hard work for them,

I have people doing all the hard work for me.

We wind copper coils, they wind copper coils with a fancy machine.

They have wires, and we've got wires, too.

We've got magnets, they've got magnets,

just slightly bigger than ours.

Their speakers can cost up to £30,000,

and our speakers don't really cost that much,

but the thing they do have that we don't is a speaker tester.

When you crank the bass down,

the vibrations make the speaker cone bounce.

And if you add an extra ingredient, you can have a whole lot of fun!

Right, so how can we improve this for our performance?

Because we really want it to reach over 80 decibels.

You've got some powerful magnets, but you could try

arranging them so that they focus the energy closer to the voice coil.

And this tape, here.

You could try something more flexible in place of that,

to allow more movement, maybe elastic bands or a balloon.

If you were to put a horn in front of the cone,

that would make it louder.

Cool.

Ben and Rich are going to be on hand to help me

at the big performance later on.

So, our top tips from the experts are,

use a balloon instead of sticky tape to put the cone on,

arrange the magnets better,

and add a horn.

HORN TOOTS

Not that kind of horn!

Yeah, that shape, anyway. These are going to be much better.

CRASH!

Huh?!

I hope Kitty's going to be OK with what we make for her.

It's much harder than I thought.

I really take my hat off to the guy that first invented the speaker.

His name was Alexander Graham Bell,

and he's the same guy that invented the telephone.

I wonder if he knows he invented the speaker at the same time.

I'll just give him a call.

PHONE RINGS

It's ringing.

Hello, is that Alexander?

-Yes.

-Hi, Alex.

Oh, shall I call you Mr Bell?

No, you can call me Alex.

Oh, all right then, Al.

Did you know that you invented the first loudspeaker

when you invented your telephone?

-Did I really?

-Yes, you did.

-So, er, well done.

-Thank you.

-That's all right. Cheers, then.

-Bye, now.

I'm so stoked that I invented the speaker at the same time

as I invented the...

(MUFFLED) ..telephone.

You know what? It's not just speakers that need magnets to work.

We do, too. It may sound radical,

but the fact is our planet has one big mega-magnet

running inside it from the North to the South Pole,

and the magnetic field it creates goes out into space

for thousands of kilometres. It acts like a force field,

protecting us from space radiation,

but if the Earth lost this mega-magnet,

the whole world would go a bit wonky.

So, you'd be walking along, looking at your map,

you'd get your compass out and, oh, no!

It wouldn't work.

So... Oh! Where did that come from?

Yep, you'd be lost.

Oh, someone should probably fix that.

Birds use the magnetism of the Earth to find their way, too,

so without it... Oh!

Oh, hello!

They wouldn't know where they were going, either.

And, no magnetism, no protection from the Sun's solar winds.

So we'd all get cooked.

Yeah, and so would the birds.

What a disaster.

OK, so, big speakers, not going to be a disaster.

I'm taking my expert tips back to my top team.

Come on, guys, we've got a lot to do. Let's get on it.

'I've stuck the magnets on already, because

'if you get your fingers caught between them, it don't half pinch!

'We're having more winds of the coil this time,

'so first job is to get winding.'

BOTH: ..69, 70!

Amazing!

Our top tip from the experts was to use balloons to just bend

the coil over the magnet, instead of using tape.

But things are starting to go wrong.

Oh, no!

And balloons splitting isn't all.

I've just realised the bolts are slightly too high.

The coil needs to be really close to the magnet,

and at the moment, it's quite far away.

So that's nearly 50 screws all needing to be redone.

We are really up against it now, and me making this little blunder here

has not helped us, so we're going to have to start making the cones now.

Well, it's nice to see everyone pulling their weight(!)

I don't think they realise how little time we have left!

Do you know, I have absolutely no idea

whether this is going to work or not.

It will probably work. It might not, though.

No, it's going to work. It might not work.

We're on the last little bit now.

What we need to do is just cut out these bits,

and then fold them in like this, so you get this kind of shape.

If you work in a team, that would be great,

but really, we've just got to get them cut!

While we crack on,

the hall is being prepared for the performance of our star guest.

Come on, everyone! We're running out of time!

I'm glad to see some expert help arrive.

So, is bigger better? Do they actually work?

MUSIC PLAYS

Both working.

-That's not bad.

-That's really good.

-That's really good.

-Guys, how do you feel about this?

-Yeah, good.

-Is it going to work?

-KIDS: Yeah!

-I like the optimism.

Everyone's feeling good, but with minutes to go,

we need to get the horns on the speakers and set them up on stage.

They may not look pretty,

but it's what they sound like that matters, and it's not sounding good.

You can't hear me, can you?

No, because they don't seem to be working at the moment.

We're having a problem getting them ready. I'm scared!

Everything's riding on these speakers working.

Just as well the experts are here to help work this out.

They've also brought along their professional speakers,

in case it all goes wrong.

Fingers crossed they've fixed the problem,

Tess is going to try them out.

# Who do you think you are

# Running round leaving scars... #

Thank goodness for that! They're working.

# And tearing love apart... #

Well done, Tess.

'Nice one, Tess!'

How do you guys think it sounded?

They sound a bit fuzzy.

When we put music through it, it sounds a lot better.

I think we've just got to do it and hope for the best, haven't we?

KIDS: Yeah.

Inside, the audience are filing in, unaware that outside,

Kitty has just arrived.

We've got our speakers plugged in to a mixing desk and an amp.

We've got to be really careful about how much power we put into it,

because it could blow, and that would be a disaster.

Because what could happen is,

in an effort to make our speakers louder,

we give them more power than they can handle.

If we reach this limit, the coils will get hot, really hot.

The glue could melt,

and the speakers might destroy themselves, and we don't want that.

There's no turning back now.

250 judges are about to hear how our speakers sound.

Hi guys, can you hear me?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

That's great. I'm talking through speakers that me

and my team radically reinvented,

and we're pretty confident they're going to hold up

to a powerful performance, so please put your hands together

and give a big, warm welcome to Kitty Brucknell!

AUDIENCE CHEER

# There ain't no reason you and me

# Should be alone tonight

# Yeah, baby, tonight. #

Let's just make this clear.

Kitty Brucknell is singing through some cardboard boxes,

balloons, wires and magnets, and it's working!

But are they reaching our target of 80 decibels?

Oh, yeah! 85 on the meter.

# I'm going to run right to

# To the edge with you

# Where we can both fall over in love... #

We've hit our target, but just in time,

because what I feared might happen is happening.

Kitty's putting so much power through the speakers,

the coils are overheating!

# I'm on the edge, the edge

# The edge, the edge

# The edge, the edge

# The edge

# I'm on the edge with you. #

'For safety's sake, we can't use these again. But they did work.

'So, what's the verdict?'

Give me a shout if you think Ricky's radical reinvention

of the speakers worked!

KIDS SHOUT

That's a big yes from the judges!

The speakers worked. Job done. They're a bit too hot to handle now.

Just as well we've got the big ones. Take it away, Kitty!

# I'm on the edge of glory

# And I'm hanging on a moment of truth

# Out on the edge of glory

# And I'm hanging on a moment with you

# I'm on the edge, the edge

# The edge, the edge

# The edge, the edge

# The edge

# I'm on the edge of glory

# And I'm hanging on a moment with you

# I'm on the edge with you

# I'm on the edge of glory... #

Phew!

Right, so you guys now know how to make a speaker

using some copper wire, some magnets and other bits and bobs.

I'm really, really stoked that our speakers made over 85 decibels.

I think we really smashed it this time.

# I'm on the edge, the edge

# The edge, the edge

# The edge, the edge

# The edge

# I'm on the edge of glory

# And I'm hanging on a moment with you

# With you... #

Kitty singing through our speakers was absolutely amazing.

# I'm on the edge with you... #

I didn't expect them to be that loud.

The best bit was when Kitty sang through the speakers.

It was so fun!

Kitty singing was amazing, and it went down really well.

I'm quite upset that it's the end of it now.

It was really fun, but I really want to do it again now!

# Yeah, yeah

# I'm on the edge with you. #

A great performance by Kitty, and a great achievement by the team.

Those speakers were a radical reinvention that really rocked.

Want to make your own speakers? Check out the website.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd