Can You Build a Crystal Radio with an Electro Magnet and Germanium Diode?

[Gluon Gecko]

I am new to this website but I would like to know how to build a homemade radio using an electro magnet and a germanium diode crystal. Are ther any other components required to complete the construction of the radio?

 

[berkeman]

I am new to this website but I would like to know how to build a homemade radio using an electro magnet and a germanium diode crystal. Are ther any other components required to complete the construction of the radio?

You will need a long wire as an antenna, and a couple other things. Sounds like this is what you need:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio

Welcome to the PF!

 

[Pumblechook]

There starting point would be getting very sensisitve high impedance headphones which are not too common these days. Piezo ones might be the best?? Old fashioned crystal sets tended to use 2000 Ohm headphones which matched well to the output of the diode dertector.

 

[Gnosis]

I built several crystal radios when I was young. I fell asleep many nights listening to the strongest local news station, WPEN. I thought it was great that it didn’t require batteries. I wound the coils myself around an empty toilet paper roll and would use 28 to 30 gauge wire. It only required a germanium diode (germanium because its forward voltage is only .25 volts compared to a silicon diode’s .65 volts), a capacitor (I used a "tuning gang"), and an earphone. By 4th grade (early to mid 1960’s), I was already building amplifiers with state of the art transistors (vacuum tubes were still the norm in radios and televisions at that time), so I’d connect my crystal set to the input of the amplifier I built to allow my brothers and I to listen to WPEN at night.

Though analog radio is still with us, if or when they go “all digital”, it will make crystal radio sets obsolete. I find that a sad thought.