Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

Getting Youngsters Started In Electronics? 20

Posted by Cliff from the resistors-capacitors-and-inductors-oh-my! dept.
Ratface asks: "Having seen the recent question about resources for interesting youngsters in astronomy, I wondered if the Slashdot readership had any thoughts about getting started in electronics. I remember building crystal radios at school and poring over the Maplin catalogue, but I never got much further than that. I would hope that nowadays there are some great resources for the budding hardware designer to get started with." I remember my first electronic circuit which I designed way back in junior high school for a science project. I dived head first into concepts that I wouldn't completely understand until college, but it was rewarding nonetheless. What suggestions do you readers out there have for getting youngsters started in electronics? Should they start with basic electronics kits or would something a bit more challenging hold their interest, longer?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Getting Youngsters Started in Electronics? More

Getting Youngsters Started in Electronics?

Comments Filter:

  • I am personally interested in getting kids interested in electronics. IMO high school is way too late because by then they get their Grade 9 "round robin" technical experience and that's it. You need to get their interest in grade 2 and up. I've had this discussion with many people and come up with some of my own ideas as well in getting youngsters curious about electronics... so much so that they ask for it by the time they hit high school. It's absoulely appauling <sp?> that the tech classes need to fight to get a measly 15 kids into the class to keep it open.

    Here's a (short) list of ideas/projects I'd come up with on my own to try to get kids interested. Please add to it, criticize it, comment on it and email me if you want to bring some of these ideas or your own to life. (this list is from 1998)

    • Use BASIC Stamp or similar and cheap Rat Shack wired kid's R/C cars and make simple robots
    • age-old light flashers
    • "build/program your own" tamagochi
    • Bar code reader - create a simple reader w/ software, kids build the kit and make some kind of game around it, teaching them about how the computer sees the codes and so on
    • Melody generators? some kind of pseudocode which makes music
    • Voice changer
    • Binary clock - has the "secret code" appeal that young boys like
    • BEAM robots
    • Robot racing / path followers
    • Build metal detectors and teach about tuning for certain metals, have some kind of game)
    • simple TV/cordless phone jammers

    I agree with a few other posters that today electronics is mainly held in opaque magic black boxes and that takes a lot of the fun out of it but there is still no reason why you can't use discretes.

    I grew up with a Rat Shack 30-in-one kit. It was great. There was some explanation about how they circuits worked but mostly you were left on your own to modify them and experiment. With some guidance these kits (I think only the 200-in-one kit is available now) could be very useful.

    The trick is to get the young boys and girls interested. That's when they're most curious and able to learn new things and more importantly remember playing with them so that later on they know that the TEL 1A0 class isn't just some room in the tech hall.

  • I agree fully, a parent, older sibling, neighbor, teacher, etc. is great for a child. I think the most important issue is to let the child get involved and let them build/design what the want. Help them with things they don't understand and try to let them figure things out on their own. But always, always encourage safety by example!! Always keep safety in mind around children and make sure they know what to do if something goes wrong.

    -Andy
  • I'm a member of the Twin Cities Robotics Group [tcrobots.org]. We deal with electronics all the time, and boy do we have fun doing it. The level we are playing at ranges from simple to complex. I personally am making an ISA bus board to do motor control with. It's a combination of both digital and analog circuitry. It's beyond the beginner in that it's a combination of analog and digital circutry as well as both VHDL and Linux device driver programming. Another in the group is doing a laser range finder that is even more complex. We're both using complex programible logic devices (CPLD**) at the cores of your designs.

    Robotics is a way to get people doing electronics in a fun way. Many simple robot designs don't even need a CPU, just carefull tuning. Take a look at BEAM robotics (Solarbotics [solarbotics.com] has some BEAM type kits). They are simple brainless robots that move around based on simple hardware programming. Learning what it takes to make these tick would help tremendously at teaching electronics. BEAM style robots rely on feadback loop electronics to operate. LEGO Mindstorms is another way into robotics. After one has mastered what the LEGO parts can do, one can start building your own electronics hardware interfaces.

    ** We're using Xilinx's [xilinx.com] WebPack CPLD programing tools. Other companies also have tools available for free or cheep.

  • I was just about to recommend the Forst Mims books (though I've only used Getting Started) when I saw your post! That was my first introduction to electornics, and I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without it. The other book I've found very useful (for scavenging parts off old circuit boards) is an NTE semiconductor cross-reference (you can get them heaply at electronic stores). I was able to look up most part numbers in that book (ICs, diodes, transistors, you name it) and find specs and pinouts.
  • Before making any sugestions I'd like to give some background. I've taught math to students getting ready to take the GED. I also particapated in a program to encourage students to become engineers. It's called US First (US First In Research, Science and Technology.) Their web site: http://www.usfirst.org/. This program requires lots of work, but the rewards are great.

    Another option is to get students building robots using the Legos MindStorm ($200). There are competitions (even at the college level).

    Good Luck. The generation of engineers that will be working 10 years from today needs to be developed and encouraged now.
  • I think a good way to do it is with interesting "projects" like for example building a remote-controlled motorboat. It lets you do both electronics and modelling, which is also really fun, and you get a working model that can inspire their imagination afterward. If there are harder parts that are a little too advanced, you can do those yourself and explain them. I definitely think the way to go is integrating electronics into other things--rockets, boats, legos, etc.
  • Agreed, these kits are superb - I got started on one here in the UK (where they are available under the Tandy brand) and there's been no holding me back ever since.

    Of course, the real boon for my generation of England was the availability of Acorn machines in schools, which are possibility the best machines to learn hacking on, due to

    (i) their excellent built-in BASIC
    (ii) their excellent built-in Assembler
    (iii) their beautiful instruction set (ARM)
    (iv) the simplicity and power of the RISC OS API
    (v) the availability of quality documentation

    What a shame future generations will be denied the pleasures I enjoyed.
  • I don't know if this is off topic, but my boyfriend wants to go into engineering (concentration in hardware most likely). He can't decide between UF (University of Florida) or UCF (University of Central Florida). I figured I'd ask here and see if anyone has heard anything about either institution. Thanx!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • One of the reasons why I am a software person is because there was always plenty of cool stuff to do with the computer and I had adequate guidance.

    Those little Radio Shack electronics kits -- I'm not sure if they exist anymore -- never cut it, because they didn't give me any sort of grasp for how to fit things together. It was 200 circuts that you could wire up, without any information about how to synthesyse something new.

    So the best way, IMHO, to introduce a kid to electronics is to make sure that they have adequate suplies and guidance, as well as something to do with it.

    I'd say a breadboard, a few microcontrollers, and various other parts. Have the kid make something simple at first, like a little radio or something, and then direct them towards something substantial, once the understanding and interest is there.
  • Believe it or not Radio Shack has a pretty good series of one panel kits full of mounted electrical components & springs for running wires. The manuals are decently written and are understandable by most youngsters. They can usually do a fairly large number of projects with each kit and most of the projects are fairly interesting.

    Yes, many of the projects can be duplicated with something pre-made from the local store but heck, there's nothing like doing it yourself & impressing one's parents ( parents - you claimed you liked the clay ashtrays - now get ready to go bonkers over the photoelectric light switch!)

    As a non-parent, not-a-big-kid-fan these are great gifts. The kids really do seem to appreciate them, I get to feel I'm doing something good, and aside from the occasional "come look at what I made" it keeps the rugrats out from underfoot while the adults visit. Remember, toys are unisex & they're just as good for your niece as well as your nephew!

    Here's the link (not embedded 'cause /. would break it):

    http://www.radioshack.com/category.asp?catalog%5Fn ame=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F009%5F001%5F000%5F 000&Page=1

  • I would tend to point to Mindstorms for exactly the reasons you have above. Mindstorms can be enjoyed without soldering, but visit any unofficial mindstorms site and you'll find such gems as an alternate programming language (or two) and electronics like sensor multiplexors. Start easy -- why reinvent the wheel?

    But the key is to find a group of local people that gather for a compeditive reason. If Lego robot wars are an option then that's the way to go. If (pulling this completely out of the air, so to speak) you have a local rocketry club that runs some sort of height competition, then go that way. Social interaction is important, but it needs a healthy competitive aspect or it gets very insular and irrelivant. Competition breeds innovation.

  • Back in my younger days, my father and I built a great number of heathkit kits. We built a vacuum tube volt-ohm meter, a digital circuit trainer (still works), and took some basic digital electronic self study courses. Not only were they a great way to do some father son stuff, but I (and he) learned a great deal from all of it.

    I don't know if they still have all the kits and whatnot, but here's a link. [heathkit.com]
  • You know, build a turtle that follows a black line, that kind of thing. I think the typical kit costs less than $99. RobotStore [robotstore.com] even sends me a catalog, with age-group recommendations on all the projects.

    This is different/better(?) than the Lego Mindstorms approach because it actually involves connecting up some wires, soldering, all that good stuff.

  • When I saw this subject on Ask Slashdot, I thought immediately of Radio Shack.

    Hate to sound like an AOLer, but: Me too!

    I had one of those hundred-and-something-in-one kits as a youngster, definitely one of the neatest gifts I ever got. The best part was that you didn't have to understand anything to make the projects work (just follow instructions like "connect terminals 23 and 86, 34 and 65, 14 and 16...."), yet there was a circuit diagram and a pretty good explanation of how it worked and some variations you might try. It was a very good set of progressive lessons.

    Radio Shack also has (or used to have, I dunno about now) a good set of electronics books, many of which would be suitable for high schoolers or even bright and interested middle schoolers.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • And get yourself the books "Getting Started In Electronics" and ALL of the little "Engineer's Handbook" books (recently updated, I noticed) by Forrest Mims. This man has started more people into electronics than I could possibly imagine. I hope he was compensated well by the publisher for his great contribution to electronics - I owe a lot of my start to get where I am now to him.

    I CANNOT recommend these books highly enough and I'm suprised nobody else has. Once you get those, you can get on your way with some parts and things, but get them from someplace like DigiKey [www.digikey] or Mouser [mouser.com] and you'll save a lot of money experimenting. I also recommend surplus places, one in particular: BG Micro [bgmicro.com], they have lots of stuff to tinker with cheap.

    Do you like digital stuff? Then go check out a Java-based TINI from Ibutton [ibutton.com] or even better, some of the kits that are available from Parallax Inc [parallaxinc.com]. They're expensive, but their stuff is quality and works.

    Good luck on a rewarding and interesting hobby with almost no bounds!

  • I love electronics. It is wonderful. I believe there are several reasons for this:

    I'm wired for it - Some people just have the mind set for kernel hacking, some for art, some for mechanics - it is a talent that I have and want to develop.

    My father had a good bit of interest in electronics and computers when I was younger - I was always with him either watching or doing. We may be changing his brake pads one day, patching up a lamp cord the next, and wire-wrapping an interface to the zx-80 over the weekend. In this way he was a mentor of sorts.

    He saw what I was interested in and he designed and presented opportunaties for me to develop that interest. It was the 300 in 1 electronics kit one christmas, or the modular mechanical globes for a birthday. Showing me how to run wires in the attic, why the whole-house fan was hooked up the way it was, using a timing light in the engine, simple programming examples on the various computers we owned. Giving me the old or used parts and pieces of equipment - This may have been the best way to learn. I would rip apart motors, solenoids, smash chips to see the dies, take old phones, toys and other things apart, and then I would ask him how something worked if I couldn't figure it out.

    He didn't start me out on kits, and didn't give me them until I asked. I see now that when I had even a medium to low complexity kit that it was difficult to do without supervision - and I didn't want help, I wanted to do it by myself, and then get help when it didn't work. Unfortunately when it didn't work I had the tendency to skip it altogether and do something I knew I could do. So I would do an easy maybe 30 in one learning kit to start off with - it's difficult to blow things up with it, and easy to do things right.

    So, in the end, 1) Encourage them to explore, 2) Provide opportunities to build, learn, and SUCCEED where they need very little physical help (ie, have them do all the work, you just provide tidbits of knowledge - let them do it their way, even if your way is faster - as long as it still works, great) 3) Get excited about their new knowledge and developments. They will surprise you sometimes with their knowledge - help them develop their problem solving and thinking skills by telling them when you were surprised that they thought of it themselves (even when it's old news to you). When they come to you with a problem or question - don't answer it. Ask them what they already know about the subject - anything related. Then ask them questions which will lead to the answer. If you can't think of a good way of doing that, then tell them the answer, and give a simple explanation of why, how, or an analogy.

    Essentially these are little engineers - Their problem solving, thinking and discovery skills will be their most important tool they will have - whether they choose electronics or not.

    -Adam

    Electronics is changing your world - for good!
  • With all sorts of cheap electronic gadgets available, there isn't the same incentive to play around with electronics as there has been in the past. Who needs to build a shortwave radio to find people to talk to, when the Internet has made long distance chatting trivialy easy?

    Work the other interests into it. If the child reads about Tesla... build a Tesla Coil. (I guess that would need some pretty good adult supervision, too).

    What you can do is find things that interest the child and see how you can work electronics into it. If they are already into computers and basic programming, microcontrollers are a good start (and a personal favorite of mine) They can teach about the basics of computers without becoming overwhelming- the Microchip [microchip.com] PIC series, especially the 16F84 is a good choice, relatively cheap, can be programmed with *really* cheap hardware, and the development tools from Microchip are free. You as the instructor must become proficient in them first, to not add to the frustration of your student. Blinking LEDs can be an introduction to the wide world of electronics- because once they know they can do it, they will be primed to learn more. There are a number of other microcontrollers that have even simpler programming interfaces than Microchip's- such as a Basic Stamp from Parallax [parallaxinc.com].

    To really keep their interest, you need to have payoff early- they need to see that they can do neat stuff before the theory gets pounded into them. Thankfully, with digital electronics, you don't have to worry as much about currents and Ohm's law to get results. The math will come, but it doesn't have to be the first part. They will be much more interested in learning why something works, after seeing it work, but you have to do both- a lot of the kits that you can find just show how to build it- without giving any insight into why it works. The why may be up to you. It will require work and commitment on both the teacher's part and the student's part.

  • Believe it or not Radio Shack has a pretty good series of one panel kits full of mounted electrical components & springs for running wires. The manuals are decently written and are understandable by most youngsters. They can usually do a fairly large number of projects with each kit and most of the projects are fairly interesting.

    When I saw this subject on Ask Slashdot, I thought immediately of Radio Shack. I'll never forget the Christmas that, under the Christmas tree, my Aunt Margaret had sent me a Radio Shack 160 in 1 Electronic Project Kit.

    I played with nothing but for the two years between when I got that and when I got my first computer.

    Wow. That was one of the best presents anyone ever gave me.

    Yes, many of the projects can be duplicated with something pre-made from the local store but heck, there's nothing like doing it yourself & impressing one's parents ( parents - you claimed you liked the clay ashtrays - now get ready to go bonkers over the photoelectric light switch!)

    In grade 5 - 9 years old - I built the "High Voltage Power Supply" project they had in there. It was a relay, wired as a vibrator, driving the Audio Output Transformer on the board. There was an electrolytic capacitor across the relay coil to keep the frequency reasonable. It put out a nice solid jolt on your fingers, but posed no safety risk. For my school science fair project that year, I got an old wooden chair, some old belts, and made up some "electrodes", and built probably the single most famous science fair project ever presented at any Ottawa-area elementary school science fair. It was an electric chair. The brave were encouraged to try it out. Not coincidentally, it was also the first time I made the cover of the local newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen.

    Actually, this does bring one thing to mind. Back in those days, I was running all my projects on a 9V battery or two AAs. Today's alkaline, NiCd or NiMH batteries - in a Radio Shack kit like that - could be very dangerous. Use the old Eveready Classics ("Cat of 9 Lives") and other cheap carbon-zinc batteries instead. If your kid shorts that out, it's not going to cause a fire the way a new Energizer or Duracell or something would.

    As a non-parent, not-a-big-kid-fan these are great gifts. The kids really do seem to appreciate them, I get to feel I'm doing something good, and aside from the occasional "come look at what I made" it keeps the rugrats out from underfoot while the adults visit. Remember, toys are unisex & they're just as good for your niece as well as your nephew!

    Absolutely. That was one of the very few things that could keep me busy for weeks on end.

    I found a predecessor to my 160 in 1 - it was a 150 in 1 kit - at a garage sale. It was about 10 years old, but all the components still worked. The two kits were quickly merged into one: the photoelectric switch turned on the three transistor radio. The Morse code practice oscillator was quickly connected to the AM Transmitter.... And then there were my own inventions. When you're 10 years old, two SPDT relays and four transformers can keep you occupied for days at a time. :)

    I see the 200 in 1 - the expensive version of my 160 in 1 - lives on! Cool! The photos take me back, too... the familiar little transformers, the pretty little relay...

    200 in 1 Project Kit [radioshack.com] link - working.

  • Does anybody remember or know what the name brand of the following is/was?
    This kit had a nickel-plated steel backplate, which was magnetic. The blocks were made of clear styrene plastic with white tops. There was a magnet inside the cube that held it in place on the backplate. There were springy copper conductor plates on the sides of the cubes, and these were connected to components inside the cube. The white plastic tops had standard schematic symbols marked on them. Ground was provided by the backplate.

    I got one of these for Christmas when I was six, and I had built all thirty circuits by nightfall. I must have messed with this stuff daily for the next six months. All I had to do was arrange the blocks and occasionally stick a fresh nine volt in the battery cube. Lost track of the thing whan I was twelve. :(

    Does anybody recognize this? Who built them? I want one again!

Slashdot Top Deals

Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.

Close