this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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Clockboy was the biggest crock of shit.
The kids dad put the thing together and prompted the kid to get in trouble with it for lawsuit bait and to boost his political career.
It wasn't even impressive he literally just took the guts out of a RadioShack digital clock and taped it inside a pencil box.
It was 100% low effort bait, it was literally a timer sticking out of a briefcase shaped pencil box that's obviously supposed to look like a bomb.
He didn't even get in trouble for having it, he got in trouble for repeatedly pulling it out to disrupt class.
The family got a ton of free shit then a year later tried to sue the city for 15 million and some conservative talk show hosts, all dismissed.
They then accepted a scholarship to a school in Qatar and moved there in 2015.
This is such a good example of the dumbass culture war shit that drove people to trump.
I've been saying this since day one! It always seemed like a huge scam to me. Just trying to bait racial tension for personal gain. And yeah, it was just a normal digital clock that got taken out of the shell. The news was saying he made it himself, but it was obviously a mass-produced item.
Do you have any documentation for this?
Here's a bbc article about how the lawsuit was dismissed
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39982239
It includes a picture of his "invention."
Here's an archive link of a Washington times opinion piece after the 3rd attempt at frivolous suits failed.
Clockboy was a straight up scam
I had direct connections to this incident (friend worked at the school), and this is pretty much exactly what happened. The only reason it was an issue in the first place were the zero tolerance policies in place that required action to be taken. Whether the family did it on purpose, no one really knew, but everyone involved certainly was thinking it.
lmao totally the ‘culture war’ and not decades of racism
Sooooo
You have a very specific and detailed story. I heard of the story long ago, initially, and It's not that no don't believe you, I want to, but it be nice to see a first source where this came from
Literally look like two comments down I already provided two sources.
there was another! some kid on the Ars Technica forum liveblogged his attempt. notable highlights:
how it started
I melted a large hunk of uranium out of one side of an ore chunk and it is by far more radioactive than anything I have (gamma). I am however concerned that background radiation level in my office and bedroom (next door) have almost doubled. I will measure again tommorow and see if maybe it is something cosmic related.
...
HOLY FUCK. DO NOT IONIZE OR VAPORIZE URANIUM. IT IS A HEAVY METAL. It's not the radiation that will kill you. It's the fucking heavy metal toxicity. Here's some guidelines for safe handling.
...
I am no David Hahn and am not as stupid, but I HAVE built a functioning breeder Aluminum+Lead sheild, but some radiation is escaping. I am going to beef it up. Right now my office is at 15-25 CPM on the counter (my dosimeter has not arrived yet) and my adjacent room is 6-10 CPM on the counter. This is over the course of 3 days in my configuration. From top to bottom. Am-241 at 2uCi bombarding a thin aluminum sheet (thicker than foil) moderated by a combo of water and paraffin, another aluminum plate to further slow the neutrons down and a crushed pile of U-238 ore (reduced with high strength peroxide). This is enclosed in a inch thick lead shield. Call me crazy if you must.... I am currently as I type, evacuating an old gas laser tube. We'll see what happens. I have Thorium and some U-238 coming in so I will be building a concrete containment block this weekend.
...
got that shit wrong. I am breeding plutonium 239. I got it messed up.
on purpose
So you're breeding fuel for nuclear weapons? that's what i thought. you're breeding pu239, which means you're breeding pu240, which is a poison. i have not given much thought to how to avoid this and change the reaction to breed something less poisonous, since you have no use for the 239 beyond "dude, i'm breeding weapons fuel!"
I am not breeding it for that purpose. Actually, I dont believe I have stated my purpose, so let me inform the fools here that may think I am breeding weapons useable fuel.I am breeding this material for its HEAT. U-238 is way too long lived to decay in a manner in which would create any sort of viable heat source for use in a seebeck electric generator of my own design. Now take off the tinfoil and shoe covers and get a grip.
some developments
The gamma output just sharply dropped so something must have changed rapidly. I am just now researching what is going on so I am not quite sure yet what happened. I think I am going to pull the neutron moderators out.
...
not great, not terrible..
Current results for the test dosimeters. 1)Reactor dosimeter - 60 roentgen 2)Desk source - Broken 0-R 3)Personal source (which I had as I slept in the next room) is reading 22 roentgen.
You mean microroentgen... right? Or milliroentgen? Surely not full on roentgen?
Full roentgen.
I'm out of my area of expertise here, but according to Wikipedia, the average lifetime dose is 16R. Is there not some danger in exceeding that amount currently?
Yes, I saw that. Yes, I am concerned a bit. I havent put my reactor into the large concrete containment yet so I guess it is definately time to do so. I have no symptoms of radiation poisoning though...
...
Okay, lesson learned... My equipment is giving me shit readings, or was anyway. Realizing my CDV 715 was shit, I removed the dial from it and attached it to my DSRB88. I based the readout circuit I built on a similar circuit that uses the same GM tube, so I know it is fairly accurate and also uses the same guage. The background radiation level in my office with the reactor is about 30 uR/hr. So, If I had the money, I would get myself a CDV-700, but I do not so I will just have to make due with this. SO I AM NOT DYING AND NEITHER IS ANYONE ELSE.
...
A much better picture of the tube. I finally calculated the emmissions from this puppy to be 6mR/hr. I was hesitant to get my face so close to it, but for the sake of pics
the inevitable conclusion
so...the FBI just came... Yes, with the NRC and Texas health department...raided my home. They accused me of acquiring the materials to construct a dirty bomb. They refferenced the capacitor on page one that makes a quip about it looking like a pipe bomb. They also told me that arstechnica is under constant surveillance for things such as this. I mean, terrorists post thier research online all of the time.
Well, on the bright side, you now have some pretty accurate readings of the radiation.
Yeah, but iirc that kid had to have his house declared a hazmat site and he may have seen some juvie time, I don't remember all the specifics
He went with the military into opiod overdose route.
That guy was a moron.
It’s actually pretty easy - you play the U2 album “how to dismantle an atomic bomb” in reverse.
IIRC the kid who got arrested was the “wrong” color
Something similar did actually happen, though:
There was also this kid.
David Hahn .... I love that story ... while I was wandering around on a bicycle running around playing kid games with my friends ... this guy was building a radioactive chemistry lab in his mothers backyard shed!
Shit not being white will get you arrested for making a clock and bringing it to school.
... nobody here is actually falling for the top pic, right...?
Damn, I was excited about a real life Hermione.
Go check the skin colour of that boy if you need further clarification.
Edit after reading the real story in the comments: it's even more hilarious, and by 'hilarious' I mean even dumber that I thought. Thank you, turdcollector69 for your wisdom.
On the contrary it seems very fair... science fair
Sounds about white.
She could have just made a complicated none sense inside and pretend it is a nuclear bomb. Nobody would ever dare it give it a try. So nobody would know it is just a pile of none sense.
Nonsense.
It's getting harder and harder to find pinball machine parts these days.
I'd be more impressed if I saw the breeder reactor or the centrifuges she would have had to build to get enough weapons grade material.