I don’t understand why they waste time and effort on an obvious hoax.  What a waste of TV airspace!  While I usually enjoy the show, the lack of scientific common sense for the sake of drama is sometimes very frustrating.  All they succeeded in making was a penny warmer….and at the risk of blowing up their amp!

I’m all for the drama. It draws the youtubers to an awesome show that they might not have watched otherwise.

In any case, I’ve seen posts by DIYers on A/V forums wondering if this really works because it would be so cool….

(and, wow! A penny warmer for under a buck?!)

This is not a hoax. They left out a step and they had too weak a signal. You can build a speaker out of almost anything. Now it will not sound very good nor will it have much volume. He is a working example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YktZQiwtu58

Of course it doesn’t work. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you short out the signal wires, nothing is going to happen (except possible damage to your ipod or whatever you used for a source). Well, it’s not SUPPOSED to take a rocket scientist to figure it out, but this IS the WWW after all, so I guess the supply of morons is pretty much unlimited.

Everyone knows that you must use the jack from a BOSE set of headphones for it to work!!

Just more idiotic nonsense from the bowels of somebody’s parents basement.  A speaker is just a specialized motor, so you need two magnetic fields to interact.  One field come from the audio signal, and the other si usually a constant field, produced by the speakers magnet.  Other types of non magnetic transducers also exist, but this pile of nonsense isn’t one of them. 
Also, why do you hold Bose up as some sort of standard of sound quality, when all they are is a standard of profitability and markup.

“Watch out Bose!” ... HIs words, not mine.

@mike - you said: “You can build a speaker out of almost anything”  you are right.  the catch is making it work.  You can’t buld a speaker out of anything AND make it work.

I can build a rocket ship out of kleenex boxes.
I can build a human heart out of cowhide.

Will they work - you apparently think so.

Thanx u soo much I was gona spend my tim tryna make it work

Well, considering that the drivers in the latest bose sat/sub systems are made of paper, have no crossover, cant produce any frequencies higher than 15 khz, and cost around ten dollars, I don’t think “Better than Bose” really means much.

SIZE DOES MATTER