A Dallas area high school student is being suspended for bringing a homemade clock to school that looked to his English teacher like a hoax bomb.
According to Dallas News, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed “loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school.” So Ahmed built a homemade clock and brought it to school.
Apparently using his inventiveness in this way was a huge mistake.
Throwing together a circuit board, power supply and digital display in 20 minutes, Ahmed had his clock. The first sign of trouble for him was when his engineering teacher told him not to show any other teachers.
Then the clock’s alarm went off in English class and the teacher, apparently frightened that it might be a bomb, confiscated the clock and the school then called the police. Ahmed was taken to detention in handcuffs.
Now his invention sits in an evidence room, in spite of the fact that police have maintained that Ahmed insisted only that it is a clock and never suggested it is anything else.
The elephant in the room is Ahmed’s name, ethnicity and religion, and the bearing those things might have on the school’s and police’s perception of his intent, although no evidence has been released suggesting that Ahmed might be lying. Ahmed’s father says his son “just wants to invent good things for mankind.”
Police will hold a press conference today, but so far no further developments concerning Ahmed’s fate have been made public.
After the story blew up over social media, Ahmed tweeted his gratitude for the public’s support. Still, he has vowed never to take an invention to school again.
