A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.

The school, which has about 440 students in grades 6 to 8 and emphasizes technology skills, was initially put on lockdown while authorities responded.

Luque said the project was intended to be a type of motion-detector device.

Both the student and his parents were "very cooperative" with authorities, Luque said.

The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said.

Luque said both the student and his parents were extremely upset.

"He was very shaken by the whole situation, as were his parents," Luque said.

Idiots. Another potential engineer frightened away by blind mindless authority.

This is why modern "chemistry sets" come with sand, salt and purified water, and no potentially dangerous chemicals. Take away the love of science and the love of experimentation, enforce rote memorization. And then the same vice principal will complain that America's science standards are slipping.

In the long run we will cease to be a leader in science and innovation. But the good news is that as we become a third world country there will be plenty of jobs in the factories of other nations that come here for the cheap labor we will provide them in the future.

They wouldn't have gotten much sympathy from my father, who was designing megawatt pulse sonar for the US Navy.

Align culture with our nature. Ot else!

A U.S. airways passenger plane was diverted to Philadelphia on Thursday after a religious item worn by a Jewish passenger was mistaken as a  bomb, Philadelphia police said.

A passenger was alarmed by the phylacteries, religious items which observant Jews strap around their arms and heads as part of morning prayers, on the flight from New York's La Guardia airport heading to Louisville.  "Someone on the plane construed it as some kind of device," said officer Christine O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia police department.