In order to build my own guitar I clearly needed to research how I would go about the task. Thus began, unbeknownst to me, my first true application of the scientific method that would eventually inspire me to become an Intel participant. I researched multiple designs in order to create something that felt both original and practical and then I made detailed lists of the necessary supplies. I collected materials from around my house, online, and occasionally even the garbage can.

Hard drives have much smaller sectors than flash memory, which does give them a slight advantage in performance. While the data on a hard drive can be changed many times without causing physical wear on the drive, the data on a flash memory device can only be changed a certain amount of times (often over 500,000 times per page, but it still adds up) before the reliability of the drive starts to corrode.