Raid Your Kitchen To Build This Potato Chip Speaker

Here is a song to play out of your potato chip speaker!

............................................
One potato, two potato, three potato, four
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more
Potato chip, yeah
Potato chips now, alright
She always flips when she gets her grip on a crunchy, munchy potato chip

I got a girl, she makes me flip
All she wants is potato chips
Whoa, potato chips, yeah
What I say
She always flips when she gets her grip on a crunchy, munchy potato chip

She don't like 'em hashed, she don't like 'em fried
But there's only one way to make her satisfied
Potato chip, whoa
Potato chips now, you gotta listen to me
She always flips when she gets her grip on a crunchy, munchy potato chip

Whoa yeah, c'mon baby, c'mon girl, c'mon baby, c'mon girl, whoa, whoa, yeah
She moves me and grooves me, she's a mass of class, a real gas
My one and only potato chip
She's my potato chip
She's my potato chip
She's my potato chip, whoa
She's my potato chip

"A potato chip works as a sound-emitting diaphragm here, but other rigid foods work just as well."

No they don't; the more flexible the better. If you want to make a fun loudspeaker (that works well) tape a coil to the side of an inflated balloon, feed a signal in and bring near to a powerful permanent magnet - magic!

My name is Sophia. I am 10 years old and my father just helped me make this for my science fair project.

We not only made a a potato chip speaker but we also used a paper plate and a piece of swiss cheese and a tortilla chip. All of them worked. We thought the piece of cheese was a little too much so we tried one with just the coil and magnet and it worked also.

So is the potato chip really doing anything? We could hear differences between the the different diaphragms but that might have been because we used different coils.

Can anyone help us understand what is happening here?

Why would the coil and magnet work without a diaphragm?