Homemade Photocells, the Dummy Method

homemade copper oxide photocell

Every once in a while the Antisocial Network staffers run across topics that catch their interest. Once in a while, the freelancer who tackled the question a) understood the topic, B) performed some careful research, and C) presented the information in a manner that demonstrated both A and B. On the other hand, we have freelancers like Martin Adamovic, who didn't hit any of the three marks in the eHow.com article she penned, "How to Make a Photo Cell" [sic], now at OurPastimes.com.

It was pretty clear from the first sentence that Martin, a one-time "sports journalist for a variety of mobile sports applications" just plain didn't understand the question. Would someone who knows what a photocell is and does write a "definition" like,

"Photocells have many different purposes and continue to be used in light, sensitive [sic] machines to determine whether or not current should flow to the machine or not..."?

Well, would she? Of course she wouldn't: someone who understands what a photocell is wouldn't even conceive of "light, sensitive machines" in the same thought process as a light-sensitive application. WTF would one of those machines be, anyway?

Whatever the case, Adamovic baldly plagiarized plans for a copper-oxide photocell from a blog written by a techno-savvy person named Kyle Steiner. Of course, since DMS rules precluded the use of blogs as references, she instead pointed readers to an article on how to use photocells, not how to make them.
For the most part, Martin managed to transcribe Steiner's instructions, which are pretty straightforward. From her copy-reword-paste job it's readily apparent that she didn't understand what Steiner was saying – her readers would have been far better served by just going straight to his blog – but she's (more or less) correct. We'll give her that much...

The reason that Adamovic is picking up her second Dumbass of the Day award today is that there's no way that she understood her topic or did more than a few minutes' work to complete her vaunted "research." Had she met both those criteria, she would have at least mentioned that 1) her photocell design only works for a couple of minutes and 2) the photocell's output is in the range of millivolts. It sure as hell isn't going to power a switch or a "light, sensitive machine"!

No, this photocell is a kid's science experiment: it's interesting, but it's only a demonstration of how light can be used to power a circuit.

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