Science Project: Dissection of a Chicken Timer

 My chicken timer died. Quite a while back, actually. We turned it into a homeschool science project.

It occurred to me that it could be useful one last time.

So we took it apart. The kids did almost everything. Little things like this build confidence and skills using real tools, so I tried not to do any more than absolutely necessary.

It was pretty surprising how many little bits and pieces there were inside.

And how many of them were super fragile; no wonder it didn't last real long.

We didn't know enough to be able to make it ring on purpose.

Or even to really tell what parts the different thingers played. There seemed to be two springs, which surprised me. I think that this larger one was the one that would coil when we'd set the time.

The second spring was really just a tiny wire; I have no idea what it did.

But the other was much more substantial.

It wasn't very happy when we tried to pull it off: it was attached firmly at both ends.

Looked cool, though, uncoiled. And it stayed attached.

It took a few minutes; more time that I'd suspected it would. But it was a lot of fun. It's a little tempting to get a working one, and see if we can't figure out more about it if we take apart one that works properly still.