How does a telephone work?

your 11 year old might gain some points by identifying the true inventor of the telephone... Antonio Meucci http://pub1.andyswebtools.com/cgi-bin/p/awtp-custom.cgi?d=garibaldi-meucci-museum&page=751 or the fact that Elisha Gray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray filed for his patent of a telephone on the same day as the fraud who was awarded the patent. (difference being that Gray's patent would have work as filed, and Bell's did not) as for how they work, not too sure how technical that you want to get for an 11 year olds report... here is a fairly simplified explanation http://www.howstuffworks.com/telephone-image.htm you can poke around the search results here for some more in depth explanations http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=telephone if he wants to explain how to wire a phone jack inside your home you can find that info here http://nyphonejacks.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-wire-telephone-jack.html if he wants to explain how to troubleshoot phone problems then he can find that out here http://nyphonejacks.blogspot.com/2009/12/troubleshoot-no-dial-tone-and-static.html