#ask-rainz

Now, I have seen pictures of the clock that Ahmed created. I will tell you it looks like circuitry to me. I’ve done experiments with them. I’ve opened up old televisions and seen components similar to those. Hell, I work around components like those. But that’s just me. 

To the untrained eye, you see a bunch of wires and a huge time display. Now, anyone that’s seen a good action film will immediately start to think “BOMB!” mainly because of how it was aesthetically designed. I saw pictures of it, and even I took a bit of fascination how it could give off the look of a make-shift bomb back in the 80′s. But take a look at it. Where is the explosive material? All you see are wires and nothing that could be considered as highly combustible or deadly in there. Where is the threat?

I will correct myself and say that it could have been designed differently. Not everyone is well versed in computer circuitry. But I wasn’t attacking the teacher that reported the incident. What gave me a sour taste was how the police handled the situation. 

You have to think about what happened that day. If it was a bomb threat, there should have been more of an immediate response to isolate the object in question. But they simply handled it like it was an object that any student shouldn’t have on them, like a knife. I use that example because when I went to high school, I heard news that a kid was arrested because he brought a knife to school and no big fuss happened. A bomb threat is a serious issue, but no evacuation was made. No bomb squad either to determine if it was a real bomb or not. They questioned him without his parents present, and even didn’t believe him when he insisted that it was a clock. If they had opened it in front of him, they should have seen that there is no threat in that briefcase. It was a case of mistaken identity, let Ahmed return to class, and that’s the end of that.

Try to keep an open mind about this. He must have been carrying that around with him all day. Why didn’t anyone else report him? I’m sure not everyone in that school knew who he was. A random kid walking with a briefcase? Shouldn’t someone report that? And I’m sure he showed his craft to his friends. Surely someone around him telling them about it must have overheard. All it took was one teacher’s fear (which was well placed, don’t get me wrong, given the times we live in) and he’s arrested.  

We as engineers, and as I’m sure Ahmed has learned from all this, we have to educate those who are not as versed in technology as others. Showing how something works is the key thing about engineering, otherwise you can call it “witch craft” and burn us at the stake.

So, with all due respect to you, I don’t have some agenda I’m trying to push. I was merely responding as a minority engineer that felt rather irritated that a bright youth of our country, which represents our future, was treated as a criminal simply because people didn’t wish to believe him. And, to answer your question, that does not look like a bomb to me when opened. On the outside, it looks like a prop from Bruce Willis’ Die Hard movie.