The following day, YouTuber G O'LastName uploaded a video in which the internals of a digital clock are quickly removed and placed inside of a metal pencil box (shown below, left). On September 17th, the blog ArtVoice published an article titled "Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves," which speculated that Mohamed did not invent a clock, but simply placed the internal components of a Radio Shack digital clock inside his pencil box. Many others took selfies of themselves holding up clocks in support. Other celebrities, especially those of color, like comedian Aziz Ansari, blogger Anil Dash, and musician Questlove, tweeted in support. Hillary Clinton offered her support, and the astronaut Chris Hadfield offered Mohamed the chance to visit the science show Generator. President Barack Obama offered him a trip to the White House in a tweet that received over 190,000 retweets in less than three hours. Many political figures and celebrities posted to social media following Mohamed's arrest. According to analytics group Topsy, the hashtag had been used almost 500,000 times in less than 24 hours, and in the afternoon of September 16th, 2015, was being used at a rate of about 100,000 times per hour. Twitter released the below chart demonstrating the hashtag's growth. The #IStandWithAhmed hashtag began to trend worldwide in the 24 hours after Mohamed's arrest. Soon after the first news of Mohamed's arrest began to go viral, Mohamed's two older sisters, Eyman, 18, and Ayisha, 17, created a Twitter account for Mohamed using the hashtag people were using to talk about his story, Within 5 hours of the account's first tweet, he had 31,400 followers. An initial post of the photograph of Mohamed being arrested to the subreddit /r/pics received 5,899 points (96% upvoted), while an additional post of a video to the subreddit /r/videos of Ahmed's father running for President in his native country of Sudan received 6,146 points (95% upvoted). Īs soon as this story was published by the Dallas Morning News, it began to accrue heavy online reaction across all social media sites. The following day, on September 15th, 2015, the Irving Independent School District suspended Mohamed for three days for bringing the clock to school, and released the following letter to the parents of students in the district, claiming that although they investigated a Mohamed's device as a threat they did not find it to be threatening, but that this was a good time for parents to discuss what types of objects were allowed and not allowed in school. Left: Mohamed's Clock | Right: Mohamed Under Arrest Once there, Ahmed was then allowed to contact his parents, a privilege of which he was previously denied. Mohamed was later pulled from his sixth period class and taken to the principal's office where he was interrogated by several officers before being handcuffed and taken to a juvenile detention center. The teacher then confiscated the clock under the impression it looked like a bomb. Instead of impressing his teachers, Ahmed's engineering teacher suggested that he not "show any other teachers," but when the clock beeped during an English class, the teacher demanded to inspect the device. Happy with his design, Ahmed installed it in a pencil box and brought it to school the next day. On September 13th, 2015, Ahmed had constructed a DIY electronic clock based on a design he found on the internet. Ahmed had hoped to impress his new high school teachers with his knowledge of circuitry and electronics. "My hobby is to invent stuff," said Ahmed Mohamed to the Dallas Morning News. Ninth grader Ahmed Mohamed is a self-taught electronics enthusiast who was a member of the robotics club in his previous middle school.
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